Good Lives
by Enkay
Summary: South Park will never change.  But people do.  Stan/Kyle/Wendy/Kenny-centric story; Style, Kendy, Stendy, etc. Rated for sex, drugs, and high school shenanigans.
1. Chapter 1

I am new to this fandom, but not to South Park. I stayed away from the fandom for a while because frankly it creeped me out, but mmm well y'know. … We'll see where this goes.

You best be readin' now.

Good Lives

Part One

"_Promise that forever we will never get better at growing up and learning to lie."_

"Good Lives," Eve 6

If there was one truth that the citizens of South Park, Colorado saw as absolute, it was that things could always get worse, and if there was anything else that they collectively deemed pretty near close to certain, it was that Stan Marsh and Wendy Testaburger were meant to be. They were bright, good-looking, college-bound kids, the pride and joy of South Park High School for their individual achievements, and they'd been together since about the third grade ("_the third fuckin' grade_," Randy Marsh would say down at the bar, when he was drunk enough to start bragging about how much better his kid was than everyone else's). There had been little hiccups in their relationship here and there, upsets, the occasional break-up when they were in middle school and felt as unsettled about each other as kids do about everything at that age, but for the last couple of years it had been smooth and easy: the perfect, flawless adolescent relationship. Stan and Wendy were as tight and wholesome as a couple of teenage kids could be—which was saying a lot for a town like South Park, in which Liane Cartman's customers lined up around the block and a good number of the town's girls had been employed at a slutty restaurant and bar since the age of eight and a half.

Now that the kids in Stan and Wendy's grade were all about to enter their last year of high school, their relationship had become the stuff of legend. Every new couple pledged to one another that they would be "another Stan and Wendy." If a student ended it with their significant other, it was because she "wasn't as great as Wendy." If someone was found to be cheating, he just "wasn't as loyal as Stan." The two of them seemed to walk the hallways of South Park High School under an accompanying spotlight, seemingly unaware of their notoriety or the appreciative looks that even the teachers would give them when they passed by. They were the ideal, and by the time the new school year was only a couple of weeks old the rumor mill was already spinning on their behalf: kids were saying that Stan and Wendy were already engaged, that Stan had proposed to Wendy over the summer, that Wendy had lost her virginity to Stan in the back of Stan's dad's SUV after the first football game of the year.

Frankly, it all made Kyle Broflovski a little uncomfortable.

It wasn't that he was jealous of his best friend's relationship. Or, God forbid, that he harbored a secret passion for Wendy behind Stan's back. (Not to say that he disliked her. In fact, she was probably the only girl in South Park that he could say he liked much at all.) But Stan's life had turned into something resembling one of those retarded teen movies that they made fun of when they saw the trailers on TV. Stan had the _right _relationship and the _right _looks and the right _life_, and there was no way that he, Kyle Broflovski (red-haired, Jewish, diabetic, probably a little skinnier than he should have been) could fit into a scenario like that. He and Stan had been best friends forever—literally, he couldn't remember a time when he hadn't had Stan to rely on—but he still wasn't used to the idea that there were some things that they were unable to share.

Obviously, Kyle was used to the idea of Stan having a girlfriend. He and Wendy had been together for as long as they'd had Garrison for a teacher (which was—Jesus—coming up on nine years now). But in the last couple of years, as Stan and Wendy had begun to metamorphose into Stan-and-Wendy, he and Kyle had become, necessarily, that much less Stan-and-Kyle. Watching Stan with someone else had forced him to step back and get a little perspective, so that it had become impossible not to notice nowadays how much better-looking Stan was than him. How much more people actually liked him.

And in dwelling on these thoughts he couldn't help but wonder—only once in a while, in depressed patches and fits of melancholy—whether Stan would actually be a lot better-off without him as a best friend, and if they really belonged together at all.

The second he was hanging out with Stan again, of course, all of his doubts disintegrated and things were exactly the same as they'd always been. And he still had Cartman and Kenny, to the extent that anyone ever had, or wanted, Cartman and Kenny. But whenever he was alone—and he was alone a lot these days, more than he ever remembered being alone before—he had begun to feel as if a vice was slowly tightening in his chest, making it difficult to concentrate on anything but the ways in which he just wasn't good enough.

But shit. Maybe that was just high school.

* * *

It was Saturday, the fifteenth of September, and the three of them, Stan and Kyle and Cartman, were at Stan's house. They were always at Stan's house these days when they hung out, since Stan spent so much time with Wendy that he seemed to want to make up for it when he was free; besides which, they had nowhere else to go. Mrs. Broflovski had long since banned Cartman once and for all from their premises for his anti-Semitism and his tendency to break into Kyle's room in the middle of the night, and Cartman himself had grown so sick of the nudges and raised eyebrows that Stan and Kyle would pass back and forth when his mother was upstairs "fixing the furniture," as he liked to think, that one day he had physically thrown them both out the front door and barked at them never to come back.

They were playing Kyle's new Gamesphere game—or Stan and Kyle were, at least (after falling dramatically behind in the first five minutes, Cartman had proclaimed it a "stupid Jew racing game" and stretched out on the couch with a bowl of Cheesy Poofs, forcing Kyle to squeeze awkwardly into the opposite corner while Stan perched on the armrest). Stan was winning. Ignoring the elbow that Kyle was surreptitiously jamming into his stomach, he screwed his brows up tight, gripping the controller so hard that the cheap plastic creaked under his hands. _Just a little further… a little further…_

"No," Kyle said, his voice escaping in a groan; "_no, no, no_…"

"_Yes_," Stan exulted; "fucking _yes_, dude—!" And then he fell off the couch, but it was too late; Kyle let out an irritated moan and threw his head back against the wall as Stan punched the air victoriously from his position on the carpet, the controller still clutched in his fist. "I fucking _owned_ you, Kyle—"

"Nice job, Stan. Putting that Jew rat in his place," Cartman quipped through a mouthful of Cheesy Poofs. He kicked Kyle in the side when the redhead turned angrily to sock whatever part of Cartman he could reach. Stan had just pulled himself into a half-sitting position, ready to pull his two friends apart if they showed any danger of damaging his parents' stuff, when the front door flew open.

It was Kenny.

His shoulders were heaving like he had run all the way there. The three of them stared at him, nonplussed, for a moment, before Cartman shoveled another handful of Cheesy Poofs into his mouth, breaking the silence with his loud, sloppy chewing.

"Oh, hey, Kenny," Stan said, sitting all the way up.

"We thought you were dead," Cartman said, as Kyle began selecting his character for the next bout.

"You wanna play, Kenny?" Kyle said, his eyes on the screen. "Stan just finished wiping the floor with my ass, but I bet if you—"

"Stan," Kenny interrupted, "your parents have to adopt me."

This spurred them into silence again. When Stan, sitting crossed-legged on the floor in shock, didn't respond, Kenny turned to Kyle, who started a little. "Or you, Kyle," he said; "I'll convert to Judaism or whatever, I don't even care—"

"Wait," Stan said, shaking his head. "Wait—Kenny—seriously?"

"Kenny," Cartman said, looking at Kenny ashen-faced, "that isn't funny, man. You join the Broflovski's Jew coven—I might have to kill you. Like, for good, bro."

"Fuck _off_, Cartman—"

"_Listen_," Kenny said, and to their surprise he pulled his omnipresent hood back, revealing bugged-out blue eyes and a certain tightness to his jaw. "You have to help me, or—or else my parents are gonna make me sell my body."

No one quite seemed to know what to say to that, aside from Kyle's proffered "dude."

"Like anyone would want your organs, Kenny," Cartman said, returning his attention to his junk food. "Prob'ly all—shriveled up and malnourished—"

"_No, _Cartman," Kenny said through clenched teeth, "_my parents are making me become a prostitute_."

Cartman looked at him for a moment before saying, "So?"

"Yeah, so?" said Stan from the floor.

"'_So?_'" Kenny said despairingly, sinking to his knees in front of them and grabbing at his own tousled hair. "Stan—they're making me—I'm gonna have to—"

"Kenny," Stan said slowly, holding Kenny's gaze, "you were _already_ a prostitute. When we were eight. Remember?"

"You got arrested for giving Howard Stern a blowjob for ten bucks," Kyle said, switching the game off with his controller.

"Yeah, but that was—actually, that was your guys' fault," Kenny said, looking at Stan and Kyle accusingly (Stan frowned and Kyle shrugged), "but that was different—I had my own TV show and—God, don't you guys get it? What kind of family forces their own kid to whore themselves off for cash?" He got to his feet again, seemingly unable to sit still, and began pacing around Stan's living room. "They were all, 'okay, Kenny, now that you're almost a man, you're too old to be a freeloader, got to start earning the family some money.' So I was like, okay, sure, I'll look for a job or whatever, but my dad was like—" Here Kenny slipped into a pretty apt imitation of his father's twang. "'Dammit, son, if there was any work out there don't you think I'd be employed?' And then they started talking about how the electric bill had to be paid and they needed some money fast, so it would be better for everyone if I just started selling myself at the strip club down the street. And I was like, 'haha, wait, really?' And my mom was like—" (here he slipped into a high-pitched facsimile of the voice he'd affected for his dad, wringing his hands as he paced back and forth in front of the TV) "'Now, Kenny, we've talked about this, and your father and I have agreed that this is what's best for you. We were gonna just sell you into white slavery, but then we decided that we want to know you're alive because _we love you_,' to which my dad said, 'Wait, honey, I thought we decided we wouldn't make a profit off him that way,' and then they started yelling at each other and my mom got the crowbar out so I just left and…" Kenny had apparently run out of steam, his shoulders heaving again, so he sank back to the floor again, not quite looking at any of them.

Stan and Kyle continued to watch him, speechless, but Cartman's only reaction was a snort. "Jesus, Kenny," he said, "way to bitch about a great opportunity." When Kenny's gaze drifted his way, he continued: "I mean, what, Kenny, are you a fag or something? You get to bang mad bitches and get paid for it, what's so bad about that? Man, I'd do it myself if I lived in the ghetto like you."

"Cartman—" Kyle said, exasperated.

"What?" Cartman said, spraying Cheesy Poofs in Kyle's direction. "S'not like anyone else's gonna want to have sex with Kenny. Kenny smells like spoiled milk. And chicks are afraid of having his, you know, his welfare babies—"

"_Cart_man—" Kyle snapped, more harshly this time.

"Cartman, you pig-fucking tub of lard, shut your fat fucking face," Kenny said in a hollow voice.

"_Ey_!" Cartman said irritably. "Don't call me fat, you poor piece of shit! I was just saying—"

"That I'm poor? Yeah, I heard you," Kenny said, getting to his feet. He seemed to have lapsed back into his characteristic apathy, although he still had that tight set to his jaw. "I always hear you, you inbred retard. I don't even know why I—" He cut himself off, pulling his hood back over his head. "Fuck it. See you guys around."

"Dude, Kenny," Stan said, rubbing the back of his head. "If you, like… need us to do something for you or whatever, I guess we could—"

"Nah," said Kenny. "S'alright, Stan, you don't have to do a thing. It's cool."

"Oh," said Stan. "Um… all righ—"

"Although," Kenny said, pausing at the door. "You know what you could do, Stan? You could go fuck yourself, you and your perfect fucking life. Could you do that for me, Stan?"

Stan's eyes were as wide as saucers. "Uh—"

"And fuck you, too, Kyle, for your goddamn self-righteous pretension. And you, Cartman—you don't deserve to live. You know that, right?"

"Kenny—" Kyle tried.

"And you know what else?" Kenny said, throwing the front door open and swinging around to glare at them. "I'm _not_ getting any pussy, and I probably won't, ever, because _everyone will know I'm getting my ass pounded on a regular basis by fat old closeted rednecks_!"

And he slammed the door behind him.

Cartman's mouth hung open. "… What?"

"Jesus Christ," Stan muttered to himself.

"Wait." Cartman looked around at Stan and Kyle, clearly alarmed. "Kenny's gonna have sex with guys?"

"He'll have to have sex with everybody who pays him," Kyle said wearily. "That's what 'prostitute' means, lardass." ("No way," said Cartman, looking as if Christmas had come early. "No fucking way.") "Stan, you want to play another round?" When Stan didn't answer, Kyle nudged him with his foot. "Dude, don't worry about Kenny. He's just pissed right now; he'll get over it."

"Sure," said Stan, rubbing the back of his head again. "No, dude, I don't think I want to play another round."

"Stanley?" This was Sharon Marsh, who then stuck her head into the room from the kitchen. "Dinner in ten. You're welcome to stay if you want, Kyle."

"Thanks, Mrs. Marsh," Kyle said, glancing furtively at Stan as he rose to unhook the Gamesphere.

Stan's mom frowned as she scanned the living room. "Isn't Kenny here? I thought I heard his voice. He sounded a little upset."

"Oh, we were just coaching our friend Kenny through a difficult time," Cartman said smarmily, looking up from his phone (which, Kyle thought grudgingly, had probably just sent out a mass text about Kenny's new occupation as a fudgepacker). "In twenty, you say, Mrs. Marsh? And what will we be having this evening?"

"Very funny, Eric," Sharon said sarcastically. "I'm sorry, but you're not welcome at our table anymore. Not after last time."

Cartman seemed ready to defend his right to a free dinner, but Mrs. Marsh was already ducking back into the kitchen. Scowling, he turned to complain to Stan, but Stan had rocketed to his feet and was aiming for the staircase with long, purposeful strides. "Stan, goddammit—"

"Going upstairs," Stan said, and then he had.

"This is _bullcrap_," Cartman said heatedly, rounding on Kyle. "As one of Stan's oldest, closest friends, I deserve certain rights, like—"

"Cartman," Kyle said, "just get the hell out."

* * *

"… Stan?"

He was curled up on the bed with his back to the door. Kyle entered the room gingerly, stepping around Stan's football stuff and backpack and all the rest of the ordered mess of Stan's bedroom before taking a seat next to his prone form on the bed, crossing his ankles and leaning his head against the backboard. The silence stretched on uncomfortably between them, as Stan didn't acknowledge his presence and Kyle struggled, and failed, to come up with something rectifying to say to him. His inability to tell what was bothering his friend without having to think about it was making his palms sweat, and it began to seem, as he sat there, that Stan was a stranger whose bedroom he had stumbled into unannounced and unwanted.

_Is this what it's going to be like? _Kyle thought to himself, staring blankly at Stan's familiar posters on the opposite wall. _Will we just keep growing apart until we don't have anything left to say to each other?_

"I fucking hate this town, Kyle," Stan said quietly, so much so that it took Kyle a moment to realize he had spoken.

"I know you do, dude," Kyle said hurriedly, trying not to sound relieved. "We both do. But we'll both get into good schools, and at the end of this year we can leave and never come ba—"

"It does something to you," Stan mumbled, as if Kyle hadn't spoken. "Living here. I mean, I used to think my dad was just an idiot, but lately I've been looking at him and thinking… did he used to be just like me? Did he used to know how insane all the stupid bullshit that happens here is? Until one day he decided just to go along with it, 'cause he realized there was just no point in trying anymore, and he just ended up forgetting what it was like to care…"

"Stan," Kyle said, "I'm pretty sure your dad is just an idiot."

"Still, though," Stan said, rolling over to look at Kyle with eyes that were dark and hollow—and at least, Kyle thought, he was the only one Stan would allow to see him like this. Him, and Wendy. "I'm terrified it'll happen one day. That I'll look around and nothing will have changed, but I'll just be like, 'oh, well. That's life.'"

"That won't happen," Kyle said. "Not to you."

"But—"

"It won't."

Stan looked at him for another moment before he flung himself facedown onto the bed. "What happened with Kenny downstairs, though," he muttered, his voice coming in a muffled trickle of sound from the crook of his elbow, "that was fucked-up."

Kyle didn't say anything. "I mean," Stan continued, rubbing his forehead against his arm, "he came to us for help—which he doesn't do, ever—and we didn't—_I _didn't—bat an eye. What he—what his parents are doing—that's not _normal_." He said it like he was convincing himself. "We could have done… _something_…"

"Kenny'll be all right," Kyle said, repeating his sentiment from earlier. "He's not stupid, and he's pretty resourceful; he'll get around it somehow." _And, _he wanted to say, _he didn't mean what he said about you, either_, but he couldn't quite get the words out.

Instead he laid a hand on the back of Stan's head, which felt right, even though they'd never really had a touchy-feely sort of relationship. Stan sighed and didn't move away as Kyle closed his palm on a handful of straight black hair. "Do _you_ think my life is perfect?" he asked, his voice coming out in a quiet mumble. "No one's life is _perfect_, dude," Kyle said honestly. "I mean, yeah, you've got it pretty good. But you're a person, not just some football-playing robot. If something was ever bothering you… you know you could come to me, right?"

"Yeah," Stan said after a short silence, during which Kyle's heart had slammed against his ribcage with uncertainty. "I know. Thanks, Kyle."

"Don't worry about it," Kyle said. "So… um… you okay now?" he said, a little awkwardly.

"Mm-hmm," Stan said, angling his head a little into Kyle's hand. "I just have a headache."

They might have stayed like that for an hour for all Kyle knew; Stan was so still that he may have fallen asleep, and Kyle, silent and motionless aside from the repeated motions of his fingers through Stan's dark hair, struggled to crush down an impending wave of unbearable sadness. It was stupid, he thought, attempting to banish the lump that was forming in his throat, because he couldn't work out why he suddenly felt like crying. Unless he was sad because _Stan _was sad, and he had these tears in his eyes because Stan wouldn't allow himself any.

He was just regaining control over his labored breathing, having finished wiping his eyes with the hand that wasn't, by this time, clutching Stan's head to the side of his hip, when a commotion on the stairs brought Kyle back to Earth. In another moment Shelley, Stan's twenty-one-year-old sister, appeared in the doorway, her figure partially silhouetted by the light from the hallway.

"_Tuuu_-rrr-_rrrds_," she said in a sing-song voice (she had never abandoned her childhood vocal tic, even with an associate's degree from Middle Park Community College and a job at the local J-Mart under her belt). "Jeez, what are you doing? Dinner's ready. Mom's been calling for- _e- _ver—"

She stopped, seeing the two of them on the bed, and Kyle got a queer feeling as she looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time since they'd known each other. He saw her eyes narrow, and the thought came to him that if she tried to come over there and do anything to Stan he would rip her fucking head off.

Finally she spoke, in a very different tone from her usual grating honk. "What are you doing to my brother?"

"He has a headache, Shelley," Kyle said hoarsely. When she didn't say anything in response he added, "We'll be down in a couple minutes."

Were she still an angry twelve-year-old, she might have tried to smack something out of him that was more satisfying. It had always worked pretty well on Stan when they were kids, to the point that she had considered up until she graduated high school that violence was definitely always the answer. As things stood, though, she was an adult now, and her brother and his puny friend were getting there. Shelley stood on the threshold, chewing the inside of her mouth and staring at Kyle's miserable face, before she muttered "You better" and left them in the dark.

* * *

If you could see the four of them now, you wouldn't believe they were friends—and if they hadn't been together since birth, as far as anyone could remember, they probably wouldn't look twice at each other if they were passing on the street.

Stan was fit, handsome. He had a place on the football team. He looked the way a small-town, blue-collar kid would look in a TV special: a kid you could trust to do the right thing, who would go off to a good school on a sports scholarship at the end of the half-hour and really make something of himself. He knew how to smile when he had to and had a confidence to his posture and an intelligence to his gaze that made people think they could put their trust in him. He was popular with girls even though they knew very well how unavailable he was. He was just popular. People loved him without his having to try.

Cartman was still a fatass, but he was tall now, too, and his bulk sat on him in ways that made it seem like some of it might be muscle. He wasn't what you'd call good-looking, but he didn't need to be: the cunning, manipulative streak he'd cultivated as a child had blossomed into a smarmy yet irresistible charisma. He was the same fat asshole he'd always been around most of the senior class, who knew his true nature too well for his questionable charm to affect them, but he practiced it regularly on teachers and younger students, with typically stunning results. The fact that he was a starter on the football team with Stan didn't particularly hurt. He was the only one of them other than Stan to have had a girlfriend, and although none of the relationships lasted very long, the possibility existed, to Stan and Kyle's horror, that his boasts of sexual prowess were not entirely imaginary.

Kenny was something else altogether. If Stan looked like a TV star, Kenny was a lanky runway model, all full lips, sculpted cheekbones, and large, heavy-lidded eyes that smoldered from under his mop of unwashed dirty-blond hair. He had become, against all odds, stunningly handsome, and the fact that his old orange parka had just fallen apart when he was about thirteen underlined the fact that he looked nothing like the scrawny death-prone kid he'd been in elementary school. Were he not a McCormick, trailer-trash poor and reeking of failure, he might have been coveted for his looks, but his family's reputation preceded him. All the girls at school saw in him, when they saw him at all, were grimy blue jeans and a low income, and to everyone else he was just Kenny, that McCormick kid.

Kyle was the only one who hadn't really changed. He still wore his green ushanka every day to hide his mess of curly red hair. He was as pale and thin as he'd always been, although he'd been able to build some scant musculature from his years playing basketball. He still had a hot temper, especially when it came to Cartman, and he wasn't much better at controlling his emotions when he got too riled up. When he looked at himself in the mirror—briefly, out of necessity, like when he had to brush his teeth or something—the big-eyed, sharp-chinned face he saw there was invariably that of a child's.

He sometimes felt the way he had the night before his Bar Mitzvah, kind of twitchy and petulant and completely disbelieving that he could just wake up the next day ready to be a man. Only now it was worse, because it was real, and no one else seemed to want to defer adulthood the way he did. While everyone else had been getting their first jobs and smoking their first cigarettes and having their first awkward sexual experiences in the backs of their parents' cars, Kyle had spent high school doing the same things every day that he'd always done, without it occurring to him that someday everything would have to change.

And he never felt more childish than he did when he found himself tagging along with Stan and Wendy at school.

"You're being unrealistic, Stan," Wendy said in her bossiest tone. Her long black ponytail flew out behind her as she strode down the hallway, her boyfriend in step beside her and Kyle trailing self-consciously behind. It was the Monday after Kyle had had dinner at the Marsh's house, the seventeenth of September, and Wendy was trying to explain to Stan why he should have started his college search a year and a half ago.

Stan gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I dunno. I think I've got a couple more months to decide where I want to apply."

"That isn't nearly enough time," Wendy said sharply. She was going to Harvard. She told everyone so, even though she couldn't actually send in her early decision application until December. "There are just too many variables. School size, _class_ size, the combination of concentrations offered, location, whether it's private or public—there's no _way_ you can find a school that offers precisely what you're looking for _in a couple of months_, and even if you do, you'll probably be competing with people who've been a little more proactive with their applications."

"Jesus, Wendy, chill," Stan said, pausing in front of his locker. Wendy clicked her tongue irritably as he spun his combination. "I've got plenty of time. It'll be fine."

"You should still show a little more interest in your future," she said sternly. "Like—Kyle. Where are you applying to college?"

Kyle looked up from his shoes, startled at being brought suddenly into the conversation. "What?"

Stan snorted into his locker as Wendy sighed and repeated her question. "Where are you thinking of going to school? Your grades are some of the highest in the senior class, so you must have _some_ idea—"

"Um. Thanks," Kyle said, pretending he hadn't noticed Stan mouthing 'humor her' at him. "But I don't really know yet… my list is still pretty extensive…"

Wendy rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded like "_honestly_" under her breath. "Do you have any preferences, at least? Something to show Stan that he's fucked if he doesn't start his college search soon?"

"Well, I don't know," Kyle said again, feeling a little awkward. He hadn't really discussed this with anyone yet. "I was thinking I maybe wanted to go to a city school… NYU or University of Chicago or something?"

"Good schools," Wendy said with approval, her aggression diminished now that she and Kyle were on the same page.

Stan was staring at him. "You're going to school out of state?"

"I don't know, dude," Kyle said yet again. And then, because Stan was beginning to irritate him with his stare: "You're the one who always talks about how much you hate South Park."

"Well, yeah," Stan said slowly, slamming his locker door shut, "but I was thinking—I don't know, CU or something—"

The bell rang. Wendy gave Kyle a wave and Stan the briefest of smiles (they were both staunchly anti-PDA) before striding down the hallway to her next class. Stan and Kyle, who had a study hall together, wandered leisurely in the other direction, the conversation dropped but pondered separately on either side as they discussed the chances of the South Park Cows so much as attempting the semi-finals in Stan and Cartman's last year on the team.

Wendy, for her part, turned into her AP physics class in a bit of a fog. She felt a little bad about nagging Stan the way she had—he sometimes told her, not unkindly, that she got on his case more than his mother did—but she was afraid, especially now that their high school days were running short, that Stan would get stuck in South Park. He hated this sad, eccentric little town more than most people did—Kyle was right about that—but he had been so complacent as of late, so listless and non-opinionated about everything, that she couldn't help but push him harder than she should have.

She knew they wouldn't go to college together. She had never really kidded herself that they would: Stan's grades weren't bad, but they fell far below the example that Wendy set at the top of the class. But having to leave him behind—watching him squander his talents on a low-level job because he hadn't taken his future seriously—that would hurt worse than any separation they would have to weather for the sake of their educations.

Class had technically started, but their bipolar physics teacher usually didn't amble in until five or ten past the hour, so Wendy sat at her desk, brooding. She didn't notice when Leopold "Butters" Stotch, who sat in front of her, twisted around in his chair in an attempt to catch her eye.

"W-Wendy," he said nervously.

Wendy frowned at him, startled. "Butters?" she said. "What do you want?"

It came out a little more harshly than she'd intended, and Wendy had to lean over her desk to grab him by the sleeve when he turned aside dejectedly. "Wait," she said hastily, "I didn't mean—we just don't normally… talk."

"I know," Butters said, and he seemed to draw himself together, squaring his thin shoulders determinedly. He hadn't changed much since elementary school. Aside from the fact that he'd grown a little taller and had a slightly neater hairstyle, he was the same too-innocent, too-gullible kid she'd largely ignored since preschool. "I know that, Wendy, and I feel real bad, because I haven't been straight with you. And…" He seemed to falter, but only for a moment; despite the blush that had spread across his cheeks, he managed to stutter, "I l-like you a whole lot, Wendy, and I just… I just wanted you to know."

Wendy stared at him. She'd always kind of assumed Butters was gay. "… Really?"

"Uh-huh," he mumbled.

"Why?"

Butters shrugged, unperturbed by her frankness. "Well, you're real nice to everyone, and fair. You're pretty, but not like those nasty women on TV. And… you're the smartest person I ever met, prob'ly."

She stared at him for another moment, half-expecting him to go on, but Butters, red and chewing furiously on the inside of his cheek, appeared to be done. "That's… that's nice, Butters," she said awkwardly, unused to turning people down. "But… I'm dating Stan. I have been for, um, a while."

"Oh! Oh, I know that!" Butters exclaimed. A few kids looked around at them and looked away again once they saw it was just Butters. "_Everyone_ knows that, Wendy! I don't want—" To her relief he lowered his voice to a near whisper. "I don't want to _date _you, o' course. I mean, I know I can't. It's just… I just wanted you to know."

Wendy felt her lips curve into a smile. His affections were touching, if somewhat unwanted and completely out of the blue. Maybe Butters had been practicing all day what he wanted to say to her. Maybe he'd been wanting to tell her since the first day of school.

Butters turned away, beet-red and muttering to himself under his breath, and Wendy decided not to tell Stan. There was no harm in it. Stan and Butters were friends, sort of, and it wasn't as if people told her they liked her very often. After all, she and Stan…

Well, Butters was right, Wendy thought with a twinge of embarrassment. Everyone _did_ seem to know that they were dating, even the younger students and people she hadn't talked to for years. She often felt like people were talking about her behind her back. Wendy was practical; she didn't get caught up in gossip, and she and Stan were both too mature to pay much attention to anything as petty as a bunch of rumors. Sometimes, though, when she was with her girlfriends and they were consoling one another over boys that they'd loved and lost and begun to despise, Wendy couldn't help but feel left out. It was almost like she was missing something vital, something that she needed to experience, even though her friends would always turn to her and tell her how lucky she was to have a boyfriend who loved her.

Soon she found herself wondering, as she sometimes did in her idle, quixotic moments, how it would feel to ache for someone that she saw everyday but couldn't bear to speak to. _I love Stan, of course_, she thought, hiding her reddening face behind her hand, _but sometimes…_

Their teacher kicked the door open at that point, however, and Wendy forced anything that didn't have to do with advanced physics out of her head, cracking open her textbook and clutching her pen.

She was not one of those girls who whiled away her classroom hours doodling in the margins of her notebooks, thinking about her relationship problems and what she would watch that night on TV. She was a hard worker who succeeded at everything she put her mind to, and bi-weekly professorial meltdowns and surplus admirers or not, she was going to get an A-fucking-plus in this class.

* * *

Stan found Kenny smoking a borrowed cigarette against the bike rack after school. There were a couple of freshmen hovering nearby who seemed to want to claim their bikes, but were too frightened of the tall, hooded senior and his cigarette to ask him to move. Kenny, judging from the vague smile Stan could see playing about his face in between drags, probably knew they were there, but he didn't seem to care enough to acknowledge them.

Plastering an affable grin to his face, Stan approached his old friend, sticking his hands in his pockets so Kenny wouldn't see they were sweating. "Hey, Kenny."

"Oh, hey, Stan," Kenny said, exhaling as he spoke. The bags under his eyes were lighter than they'd been on Saturday afternoon. "Want a cigarette?"

"Oh, yeah, I'll just stroll into football practice with it."

"Well, good, 'cause I only got one." Kenny stretched tall, like a cat, before sliding along the bike rack a couple feet. The freshmen hurried forward while they had their chance and began untangling their bike locks, sending Stan and Kenny glances on the sly as they did so.

Stan stepped closer. Kenny took another drag and held his gaze. "Listen," Stan said quietly, "I'm really sorry about the other day. We should have been there for you."

"That's all right," Kenny said casually. "I kinda sprung that on you. Felt a little bad for putting you off your Gamesphere game."

Stan's jaw worked around an angry retort. "I just want you to know," he said finally, wondering if Kenny's gaze usually lingered on his expensive letter jacket, "that I—and Kyle too, both of us—are always ready to help you out if you need it." He forced a laugh. "I mean… it's been a while since we've gotten into any stupid bullshit—"

"Well, I appreciate that, Stan," Kenny said, cutting him off, "but I'm taking care of my own stupid bullshit this time." Seeing the stricken look on Stan's face, he added, "C'mon, cheer up. You gotta get all that extra practice in for the big game."

"You know what, fuck you. Give me a cigarette."

Kenny's eyebrows raised a fraction. "I told you I only had one."

"Yeah, and you're also a fucking liar. Give me a goddamn cigarette."

Kenny shrugged and took a crumpled cigarette out of the pocket of his hoodie. Stan jammed it between his lips, feeling the freshman kids' eyes on him, and before he could react Kenny leaned forward and pressed the lit cherry of his cigarette to the end of Stan's, exhaling softly. His eyes, too close, lingered on Stan's and then dropped as he pulled away, amused. Stan finished the drag and glanced to his right. The kids were gone.

"Did you have to do that?" he muttered.

"Stan," Kenny said, his wry smirk not quite reflecting what was in his eyes, "you could get down on your knees and suck my dick right here and nobody would say a fucking thing. Or believe them if they did. Well, Cartman, maybe, but it's not like anybody believes the shit he says." He took a long drag and exhaled slowly, turning his head so that he didn't blow smoke into Stan's face. "Sorry to break it to you, Marsh, but you're as straight-laced as they come."

Stan tried to come up with some witty response, couldn't manage it. Tried not to cough when the smoke made his throat burn. "So," he said finally. "You're really… okay?"

There was a short pause as Kenny looked at him sideways and formed one of his funny little smiles. "I'm handling it," he said.

"Good," Stan said. "Good."

"Hey, fags!" This was Cartman, who had walked up and slung a beefy arm around Stan's shoulder like he wasn't obviously interrupting a serious conversation. Given what Kenny had done not a minute before, Stan couldn't help but flinch at the slur. He felt his face reddening, either from shame or because he'd felt shamed in the first place. He wanted to leave.

"So Kenny," Cartman was saying, his arm weighing Stan down like a pudgy yoke. "You lost your ass virginity yet, or is there still time for me to follow you around with my camera phone? It's got all these fancy video settings, see, and I was wondering if it'd be better to use the normal one or the night vision—you know, for that extra bit of _authenticitah_—"

"Cartman!" Kyle appeared from out of nowhere on Stan's right, making him jump nearly out of his skin. "Leave Kenny alone! You're just pissed because no one cared about your fucking text message campaign."

"Well, clearly the people need hard digital proof," Cartman said, pulling his phone out of his letter jacket pocket with the arm that wasn't crushing Stan's shoulders in a vice grip. "C'mon, Kenny, get fudgepacking."

"You queen, Cartman," Kenny said calmly, crushing his cigarette butt into the ground with his shoe while Cartman spluttered. "I'll see you guys," he said, flipping Cartman off as he left.

"That piece of shit," Cartman snarled, watching Kenny trudge away across the parking lot. "Just for that, I _will _follow him around with my camera phone! He thinks I'm fucking kidding…"

"Cartman, you need to get over your camera phone," Kyle snapped. "No one follows your fucking vlog."

"_Ey_! The Cartman Vlog is fucking Internet _gold_," Cartman said, waving his phone around as he spoke. "I'll have you know, Kyle, that I get well over two hundred hits a day."

"Probably all hairy German guys looking for your mom's BDSM site," Kyle said, grinning at Stan, but his grin faded a little when Stan failed to respond.

Cartman looked at Stan too, scowling. "Stan, will you please tell your Jewfag friend that—" He sniffed, and his eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "Are you _smoking_?"

"Kenny gave it to me," Stan said blankly.

"Well, bitch, you better swallow it before we get to practice," Cartman said, snatching the bent cigarette from Stan's hand and taking a drag before slapping it back into Stan's palm. "Speaking of, we got five minutes. Hurry your ass up."

"You okay, Stan?" Kyle said quietly as Cartman sauntered away toward the football field.

Stan glanced at him and knew he was thinking about Saturday night. Was irritated, despite himself, that Kyle would bring something like that up in the glow of the afternoon sunshine, where the tug of Kyle's fingers in his hair was nothing but a slightly embarrassing memory. "Yeah," he said shortly. "Fine. Doin' good."

"Well," Kyle said. And paused. "Well," he said again. "You should probably… um… you should probably get to practice."

"Yeah," Stan said slowly, and didn't move, turning the half-smoked cigarette over in his fingers. He didn't _want _to be late—he cared about football—he cared about practice. Even if he kind of wanted to skip out, just this once. Hang out with Kyle, even if he found he was having trouble meeting Kyle's eyes. Chase Kenny down and tell him he didn't fucking feel like going to practice and did he want to steal something or set some cow shit on fire or whatever—that would wipe the fucking smirk off his face.

But thinking about actually doing it, finding Kenny and hanging out with him in his sad, dilapidated house or whatever the fuck Kenny did after school these days… that was about as appetizing as the thought of watching Cartman's vlog. And really—_come on, Stan. Come on. Football. The game._

_ Gotta get all that practice in for the big game_, Kenny had said.

Stan sighed and put the cigarette out.

* * *

The weeks, as they do at the beginning of any school year, crawled forward slowly. Wendy continued to nag Stan about starting his college applications, while Stan, looking a little wan and weary as of late, maintained that he would be fine. Cartman told Kyle and Wendy in confidence (separately, with Stan standing next to him and glowering at him both times) that Stan had been screwing up a lot at practice recently. Kenny had as good as dropped off the face of the earth, so little did any of them see him after school or in-between classes, to the point that Cartman had lost interest in his camera phone campaign entirely. Butters and Wendy were a little friendlier in physics class, but Butters never mentioned his crush on her again, and whenever he saw her with Stan he didn't bat an eye, to the point that Wendy was almost frustrated that the whole episode hadn't come to something a little more… dramatic.

Maybe it was because Bebe was going through a nasty breakup with a junior named Boris and Wendy couldn't help but wonder why her life was never that exciting. Maybe it was because she was frustrated and, yes, a little bit bored with her public school education, so eager was she to prove herself with something a little more challenging. Or maybe it was because Stan had been so depressed and unfocused lately that she was sure some good old-fashioned melodrama would have snapped him out of his funk.

"Dude, Wendy, I don't know," Kyle said when she cornered him at his locker. It was the twenty-seventh of September, a Thursday, and Stan was home sick. Wendy wouldn't have been concerned—she was fundamentally opposed to clinginess—was it not for the fact that he had practice that afternoon and a game the next day. This was unprecedented. If Stan was slacking off on football, there was clearly something wrong. "He's just been in a weird mood lately. Maybe it's senioritis—maybe it's 'cause you won't shut up about his college applications." He gave her an accusing look. "He's not stupid, all right? He'll do it when he feels like it."

"Don't blame this on me," Wendy snapped. She regretted it immediately, especially when Kyle gave her a sharp-eyed look that seemed to mirror her own, but talking to Kyle without Stan between them was making her more nervous than she'd thought it would. She couldn't help but feel frustrated. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap, but—come on, Kyle, you must have noticed _something_." He didn't answer, tossing a dog-eared copy of _The Catcher in the Rye _into his locker. "I mean, you spend as much time with him as I do, so—"

He slammed his locker shut, looking even less friendly than he had before. "Like hell I do."

Wendy realized she'd hit a nerve. Stan and Kyle were best friends—_best _friends, to the point that there'd barely been room for anyone else when they were younger. She and Bebe didn't spend as much time together as they used to, since she had Stan and Bebe was always dating somebody, but Stan and Kyle were different. They were closer than brothers. They seemed to read each other's minds sometimes. She had long since come to terms with the fact that as close as she and Stan were, he needed Kyle just as much, and vice versa. It was just the way things were.

"Kyle, wait," she said hurriedly, because he looked like he was about to walk away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be… to be insensitive, or… I mean, I'm just—"

"It's okay," Kyle said, rubbing the back of his neck. He really wasn't bad-looking, Wendy thought, if you ignored his lackluster dress sense and the fact that he was a little too skinny. It didn't really make sense that he never went out with anyone. "I've been kind of worried about Stan too, honestly, all his mood swings and everything… so if you want me to… to ask him about it or whatever, I could…"

She was watching his lips, chapped but well-formed, and the tendrils of red hair that had escaped from under his worn-out green hat. There were probably several girls in this school that were perfectly willing to date him. Maybe it was that guarded look he always seemed to have that kept them away, or the fact that he stuck so close to his friends…

"Wendy?"

Kyle was looking at her inquisitively (his eyes were downright luminous, the most incredible green). She hadn't heard a word he'd said. "I'm sorry," she said, feeling a little flustered, "but I wasn't—um—what did you just say?"

"Nothing," he said shortly, shouldering his backpack and looking away. "I have to get to class, but—I'll take care of Stan, okay? I think he's just going through some stuff."

"Sure," Wendy said, and she leaned against the locker next to his, opting not to watch Kyle walk away in case she liked what she saw. _Jesus, Wendy_, she thought, running her hands through her long dark ponytail with nervous fingertips. Her insides were prickling with anxiety and outright shame.

Being flattered by Butters' admission was one thing, but checking out Stan's best friend when Stan wasn't around—and making a complete ass of herself in the process—was something else altogether. She wasn't even attracted to Kyle (awkwardly cute as he was), and she was _not _the kind of girl to mentally drop out while someone was talking to her. _And for god's sake, Wendy_, she thought, wringing her hair neurotically in her hands, _Stan—_your _Stan, the boy you've loved for years—needs help_. For whatever reason, he was seriously upset, and she hadn't even been bothered to ask him about it, or see if there was anything she could have done to make it better…

Wendy had a class to get to, so she started walking, but without much thought to where she was going or what she would do when she got there. Clearly she needed to be a better girlfriend. If Stan had become complacent as of late, so had she. She'd gotten used to his always being there, like a particularly attractive piece of furniture. Stan deserved better than that.

What's more, there was an unease crawling over her skin now that she couldn't seem to dissipate. Even if they couldn't go to college together, it had never occurred to her that what she and Stan had could end. Now their relationship seemed malleable: Stan could break up with her over something trivial, over something she didn't even understand, and that would be it. She might have fantasized about romantic strife, but there was nothing beautiful about this feeling. It was ugly, and it hurt. As she turned into her classroom, Wendy resolved that she would use every feminine wile she had at her disposal to restore her relationship with Stan to what it was supposed to be.

* * *

Of course Kyle had noticed something. He'd been noticing something for weeks. It was part of his duty as Stan's best friend to know everything about him, from his changes in mood to his favorite dessert to the combo he used the most often when they were playing one-on-one fighting games on his Gamesphere. And she had the nerve to come up to him and berate him about _noticing_ things, when all she'd done for Stan since the beginning of the school year was nag at him about the shit _she_ thought was important…

Kyle liked Wendy—he really did—but _damn_ could she be self-centered sometimes.

He was doing what he could, even if "what he could" was pretty much fucking nothing. Stan came back to school that Friday and was partially responsible for a humiliating loss against North Park High. Wendy had been invited to Bebe's for a sleepover party, so Stan spent the night nursing his wounds with Kyle, Cartman, Token, Clyde and a bunch of the other guys (Kenny was still mysteriously absent). They went over to the Marsh's after the game to watch late-night TV and consume extra-buttery popcorn and smuggled beer by the can. When 1 a.m. rolled around and most of the guys were either passed out or had left to crash the girls' party, Stan, who was slouched over on the couch, let his head fall onto Kyle's shoulder, his face blank in the light of the TV screen. Kyle rested his head on top of Stan's until he was sure his friend had fallen asleep and tried desperately to understand. The next morning, they went to dick around at Stark's Pond, where Stan ignored Kyle's feeble attempts at a meaningful heart-to-heart in favor of the stupid shit they always talked about. Wendy had seemed especially desperate to spend Saturday with her boyfriend, taking him off Kyle's hands around noon, but by late Sunday afternoon Stan had sought his company again, standing in the Broflovski's doorway with a two-liter bottle of soda and asking if Kyle wanted to hang out and um I don't know watch a movie or something.

"Sure," Kyle said, opening the door a little more to let him in.

Stan trudged inside and handed the soda off to Kyle, who went to put it in the fridge; when he came back into the living room Stan was curled up on the couch with his face pressed into one of Mrs. Broflovski's pillows, looking like he was on the verge of death. Kyle sighed. "Stan," he said.

"Mm," Stan said.

"Are you ever going to tell me why you're so depressed?"

There was a short, pregnant pause as Stan shuffled around on the couch a little. "'M not depressed, dude," he said, his voice muffled by the pillow.

"Uh-huh," Kyle said, mostly to himself, and headed back into the kitchen to get snacks.

They sat in front of the TV in relative silence for about a half hour, watching a rerun of Terrance & Phillip for a few minutes as they both wondered why they'd liked this show so much when they were nine, and when Kyle discreetly changed the channel they found a show about people who'd had really hilariously awful skateboarding accidents, which they both liked a lot better. Stan looked a little less out of it when he was snorting with laughter at a guy who'd managed to snap his femur in half by falling off a railing, but at every commercial break he seemed to sink back into himself, his eyes closing halfway and drifting away from the TV like they weren't really seeing anything. Kyle just grasped Stan's ankles, which Stan had flung onto his lap after he sat down, and pretended everything was normal.

Eventually, Kyle figured they should watch a movie like they'd planned and slid onto the floor to pick a DVD. Stan turned the volume down on the TV from behind him. "Dude, what do you feeling like watching?" Kyle said over his shoulder.

"I dunno. You pick."

Kyle sighed again, feeling more than a little frustrated with this whole situation. "How 'bout we both think about it?"

"Sure." Stan fell silent, and Kyle focused on the DVD rack, pulling a couple of titles out to peruse them further. A comedy might cheer Stan up… although a couple hours of some fake gratuitous violence probably wouldn't hurt, either…

"You should let me suck you off," Stan said, as if he were commenting on the weather, or asking Kyle to pass the bag of chips that sat on the floor between them.

Kyle, still trying to decide between an action flick and a dumb comedy, looked around without really processing what Stan had said. It sounded like a joke, and not a very good one; it was something Cartman would say to taunt him, or get someone like Butters or Clyde or Kevin to say while Cartman lurked in the background with his camera phone. He found himself glancing nervously to the stairwell despite the fact that teaming up with Cartman to humiliate him was just about the last thing he could imagine Stan doing. Well, until now. "… What?"

"I said you should let me suck you off," Stan said again, propping himself up on one elbow. He looked a little uncomfortable now, like it had occurred to him that he was suggesting something a little out of the ordinary, but he also didn't look like he was kidding. Not in the slightest, Kyle realized with a jolt—and all of a sudden he was in panic mode, his pulse pounding furiously in his ears.

"Stan," he said weakly. "Wh… what—"

"Don't just say no," Stan said hurriedly, sitting up and clutching the seat of the couch on either side of him. "Think about it first. Please, Kyle."

A key turned in the front door and Kyle jumped about a foot. To his complete and utter horror, he turned to see Sheila Broflovski's sizable behind shove into the house, followed by the sizable rest of her, beehive hairdo and all. "Oh, good, Kyle, you're home," she said, sounding a little out-of-breath. "Sorry we've been gone so long, but there was just _terrible _traffic. Can you help Ike with the groceries, please?"

Ike Broflovski, tiny for a boy of eleven, stumbled past his mother, loaded down with what looked like half the food stock at J-Mart. Kyle jumped to his feet and lightened his brother's load, pointedly ignoring Stan as he did so, and when he'd gone into the kitchen to set the plastic bags on the counter he heard his mother engage Stan in conversation. "Oh, hello there, Stanley."

"Hey, Mrs. Broflovski," Stan said politely.

"How are your parents? And your sweet little girlfriend Wendy?"

"They're all okay," Stan said, and Kyle heard him stand up. "Shouldn't I go help Kyle and Ike put away the groceries?"

Kyle nearly dropped a jar of peanut butter that he was in the middle of shoving in the cabinet. Ike looked at him questioningly.

"Aren't you sweet," Mrs. Broflovski cooed. "I'm sure that's not necessary, Stanley, but you're certainly welcome to stay for dinner."

"Geez, why does Mom have such a boner for your friend?" Ike muttered, and then looked at his older brother in amazement when Kyle nearly tripped into the fridge. "Man, Kyle, what's with you?"

"Nothing," Kyle said, straightening. "Fuck. _Fuck_." He whipped around so fast that Ike flinched. "Finish this up for me, would you?"

"What?" Ike protested. "Kyle—"

"I'll make it up to you," Kyle said, striding back into the living room. He grabbed Stan's arm and dragged him toward the stairs.

"Kyle!" Sheila snapped. "I told you to—"

"Me and Stan'll be down later for dinner, Ma," Kyle said, and Stan shrugged at her as they went.

"_Kyle_—"

"_Later_, Ma!"

"Whoa," Stan said as Kyle slammed his bedroom door behind them. "You just… like… blew your mom off, dude. That was great—"

"_Stan!_" Kyle cried, whirling around. "What the _fuck_?"

"Oh," Stan said, and looked at Kyle for a while, and when Kyle didn't say anything back he said, "Well?"

"Ugh!" Kyle collapsed on the side of the bed and held his head in his hands. "I don't—" he said, and then stopped. "I don't _understand_. Why would you—why would you even—"

"Don't think about it too much," Stan said, in a voice that would have been reassuring had it not been so tense. "I just—I feel like I need to do this, okay, so—I mean, all you have to do is sit there—"

"Oh, no, Stan, _fuck_ that," Kyle snapped, looking up at him. "If we're going to do this, you _are_ going to explain it to me. So fucking talk."

He realized too late, his stomach shrinking in on itself, that he'd made it sound like he had already consented, but Stan didn't appear to notice, frowning and swaying on the spot with his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

Finally, in a voice that creaked as it escaped his lips, he said, "I don't… _care _about things like I used to. I'm unhappy and tired and anxious and so _bored_. I'm bored of my family, and football, and school, and even Wendy—it's all the same, every goddamn single fucking day, and I'm so sick of it all I just want to…"

His eyes wandered over to Kyle's dresser, where Sheila had propped up pictures of Kyle and his friends in cutesy department store frames that moms begin to buy when their kids start getting older. Stan and Kyle and Cartman and Kenny on the day they graduated elementary school. Stan and Kyle grinning and shouldering their backpacks on the first day of high school. Kyle holding Ike tenderly the day the Broflovskis had brought him home. "Dude, I'm just sick of myself. I want to _do_ something about it. Something—I don't know, something _different_."

Kyle gaped at him with his mouth open a little. Blinked. Tried to swallow. "… So when did 'doing something different' become 'sucking my dick'?"

Stan blushed despite himself. "It was… it was something Kenny said to me… kinda stuck in my head," he mumbled, "and… just kept thinking… look, it doesn't even have to be _you_, really." He paused without seeing Kyle's furrowed brow, the peculiar curl to his lip. "But you're the only one I know I could trust."

His words hung heavily in the air between them as Stan swayed back and forth, rubbing his arms and trying not to look at himself in the mirror on Kyle's closet door, and Kyle stared at his feet, thinking. His name was a glaring omission from Stan's list of grievances, and although it would be easy enough to convince himself that Stan was not tired of him, would never be tired of him, the very notion was a gnawing, miserable hole in the pit of his stomach: what if he and Stan began to grow apart? What if their conversations became stilted, and their silences awkward, and it became obvious that Stan saw the time they spent together as a habit, a chore—

"Okay," Kyle said.

He was biting the inside of his cheek too hard. That was the reason for the stinging in his eyes.

"Really?" Stan said softly.

"I said 'okay.'"

But he still yelped and drew back on the bed when Stan dropped to his knees in front of him. "_Now_?"

"Like you're gonna want to go downstairs and face your mom without getting your rocks off," Stan murmured without meeting Kyle's eyes.

So they did it. When Kyle wanted to curl his fingers in Stan's hair he clutched at his comforter instead, and when Stan was done he got up without a word and went down the hallway to the bathroom that Kyle and Ike shared.

Kyle was stretched out on the bed with his eyes shut tight when he heard Stan come back into the room. The mattress creaked as Stan sat down on the edge, and they sat in a now-familiar silence as they each waited for the other to speak.

"Your mom wants you to come downstairs," Stan said finally. "Ike told me."

Kyle didn't say anything.

Stan breathed in a little too harshly. "Kyle, if you want to, we can just pretend—"

Kyle kicked him in the side to indicate that he should shut up.

They were quiet for some long seconds more, Stan positively twitching with restlessness, before Kyle's eyes opened and he said something that Stan couldn't quite make out.

He stared at Kyle, not a little apprehensively. "Huh?"

Kyle looked back at him plaintively. "I said, 'come with me?'"

The only time they touched for the rest of the night was when Stan brushed Kyle's hand on the way down the stairs.

* * *

WOOOOOOOOO

This is draft #2. I cleaned up some of the language and rewrote most of the sections that focus on Wendy, because they were just not very good. Hopefully she comes off as more realistic now than she did in the first draft.

Anyway, TELL ME WHAT YOU GUYS THINK. I'm not one of those people who refuses to update without reviews or anything (probably because I'm not a twelve-year-old girl), but it's hard to improve without feedback, so. I have an absolutely _horrible _track record with updating quickly, so sorry if it takes a little while, but I am hard at work on part two and _god dammit I swear I am going to finish this one_.

Thanks for reading. It means a lot. :D


	2. Chapter 2

Feeeeeelings. So many feeeeeeelings in this chapter. Which may have been why I had so much trouble with it. This first part about Kenny (which I love) came out like _magic_, but the rest of it was all gummed-up and splintered for a while just because I didn't know what to do with it, so it took a little bit to make it all feel right, even though I've been working pretty steadily on this since December. Sorry about the wait.

Good Lives

Part Two

"_I don't want to know that you don't want me  
__I don't want to know what you do without me  
__I don't want to know what I'll be without you  
__I don't want to know, I don't want to know"  
~ _"Someday," Tegan and Sara

Kenny McCormick loved depravity. He lived it. He fucking rolled in it every time he slept. It was in the stained bathtub on his front lawn, the vodka in his mother's cocoa. The bleach stains on the musty shag carpeting in his room. He breathed it in every morning when he pulled on clothes his mother hadn't been bothered to wash and felt it slither down his throat every night when he washed down his microwave dinner with day-old instant coffee. It was in his stolen cigarettes and the broken blood vessels in his eyes. When he felt threatened at school by the citric sterility of cleanliness or the staying power of an idea, it was his safety net. He would disappear into his faded black hoodie and let his mind trickle away under the stink of motor oil and alcohol and cheap cologne.

His parents still made him angry sometimes. His older brother Kevin, who had the only income, was always either at work or slumped on the couch next to their dad, his eyes glazed over with liquor, and his younger sister Karen spent most of her time in her room, slinking around with her head down when she had to emerge, so reacting to their parents had become Kenny's responsibility. When he found his unemployed mother goading Kevin into taking more hours at work, or caught his dad sneaking quarters from the sock in Karen's drawer, things like that—that's when he would go off at them. He'd scream and shake and beat the shit out of the furniture like a child having a tantrum, just so they'd stop staring and fucking get up off the couch and fight with him. They fought with each other enough. But these fits usually ended with Kenny leaving, stomping past the broken-down gas station where Cartman had once shut Butters in a refrigerator and sucking on a cigarette like his life depended on it, and when he finally slowed to a stop and stared blearily at the sky he could never remember what he'd been so angry about. So he went back, and things carried on the way they always had. And it was all right, because he'd never known anything else.

This time was different.

There was nothing wrong with the _idea _of prostituting himself, Kenny figured. He might've done it himself had he ever been in dire need of a quick buck. The thought of being groped at and violated made him feel sick to his stomach—apparently he had a line, and that was it—but if he maintained control over the situation… well, that was a different story. There was a power to the act of seduction that he found almost appealing. He could be good at it, probably. As good as Kenny could be at anything.

The thought of doing it for _them_, though, of sinking his rightfully-earned fuck-money into the parade of TV dinners and bottles of J-Mart brand vodka that made up their home, made him want to break more than furniture. He wanted to break their heads. He wanted to snap their necks and sell their bodies to the state, use _that _for rent money. Fuck them. He didn't need parents. He didn't need anybody, not even Stan and Kyle.

So he would do it. He'd whore himself out. But he'd do it his way, with his mouth or his hand or any other part of him that the poor sad motherfucker who was paying him wanted to use, as long as he, Kenny, got the final say. And he'd do it himself, without having to sit around that cesspit the Peppermint Hippo while they took most of his cut and held the rest of it for his parents to come and collect when they ran out of booze money. He knew this town, and he knew how to listen. He knew who to talk to at the sports bar, at the gym, on the streets, even at school. And most importantly, he would go through with it all, because he'd never learned what it meant to go too far.

Yeah, Kenny McCormick loved depravity. He _was_ depravity. And several weeks later, he was coming to school every morning with the pockets of his hoodie lined with twenty-dollar bills.

* * *

When Stan woke up the morning after he'd sucked Kyle off, he lay in bed for a very long time without moving. The light glancing in between his curtains was too bright, his limbs felt heavy and tangled like a marionette whose strings had been cut, and although the numbers on his bedside clock were approaching the time at which he usually left for school, he couldn't seem to get up the energy to do much but dwell on what he'd done.

They'd been okay last night, him and Kyle. Mrs. Broflovski's dinner had been wonderful, and the family evening had been serene in a way that didn't reflect anything the Marsh family had ever done together. The TV had rumbled quietly in the background as Ike thrashed everyone at a game of Trivial Pursuit, and between the comfort of being in a familiar place and the relief that accompanied no one demanding anything of him, Stan had felt at peace.

The only time he and Kyle had been alone was when Kyle saw him to the door and nodded at him instead of saying goodbye. Stan had tried to say something—anything, really, just like a see you tomorrow or a thanks for having me or whatever. But Kyle's eyes had flashed the way they did when he was irritated, so Stan had left without saying anything, rubbing his arms against the autumn chill as he walked home in the dark.

It wasn't that he regretted it. At least, he didn't think he did. His memory of the act itself was fuzzy and unreal, and he was having trouble convincing himself that _yes, really, me, _I _did that_. He wasn't depressed anymore: it felt like he had taken a break from himself, and now that he'd had a breath of fresh air he was content with being Stan Marsh again.

Involving Kyle in his bullshit emotional problems, however, was possibly the stupidest thing he had ever done. Kyle was… well, sensitive was the wrong word, but he just took everything so _seriously_. It would be just like him to insist that they talk about it, or that he had to tell Wendy about it. Or that they couldn't even be best friends anymore. He'd want to overanalyze it and discuss every last effect it could have on their relationship when honestly, really, all Stan wanted to do was forget they'd ever done it. It didn't need to be anything more than an embarrassing memory they never talked about so long as he managed to convince Kyle that it hadn't meant a thing.

_I should have asked Kenny_, Stan thought bleakly, staring at the ceiling; the thought gave him a sick feeling that he'd never experienced with Kyle, but it was true. It was Kenny, after all, who'd put the idea in his head, and it wouldn't have taken much coercing to get Kenny to help him out. (Kenny may not have liked it, but there wasn't much he wouldn't do for a couple of bucks or a hot meal.) Most importantly, Kenny would understand. He'd have laughed at Stan and patronized him and the whole experience would have been a hell of a lot more shameful, but that would be it.

Stan rolled over and stuffed his face into his pillow, clutching the ends with both hands. _What the fuck is wrong with me? Why did I have to ask Kyle?_

Because he never felt wrong when he was with Kyle. Kyle just kind of understood stuff about him that he would've been embarrassed to have to admit to anyone else. And sometimes, when they were hanging out just Stan and Kyle, he almost felt like they were really one person who had been split into two separate consciousnesses, the way they seemed to _get _each other.

Maybe that had been his mistake.

There was a quiet knock on his door and Stan grunted in response. The door cracked open and his mother said, "Stan, honey? Wendy's here to see you. Is it okay if I send her up?"

Stan sat up. "Wendy?"

"You're not expecting her?" Sharon opened the door more fully and frowned at seeing him still in bed. "Oh, Stanley, did you just wake up? You'll be late for school."

"Yeah, sorry, Mom. Had some stuff on my mind."

Sharon's expression softened. "If you're still not feeling a hundred percent, I guess you can stay home another day. I know you must be torn up about losing that game…"

That's right, Stan thought dimly. They'd lost a football game on Friday. "No, Mom, it's fine, I'm fine. I'm not upset about the game. Just send Wendy up, okay?"

Sharon raised her eyebrows. "Are you going to be dressed by then?"

He was just pulling a t-shirt over his head when Wendy slipped into the room without knocking, her face easing into a smile. Stan laid eyes on his smart, practical girlfriend, her dark hair contrasting prettily with the pale blush of her skin, and as he took her into his arms he felt for the first time in a while that his life made sense.

He wouldn't let her kiss him, citing morning breath as an excuse ("Seriously, Wends, I got out of bed like three minutes ago"), but she insisted on holding his hand, playing into the stereotype of the clingy girlfriend that she generally would have mocked—and Stan let her, squeezing her hand in response to her head on his shoulder. They sat side-by-side on Stan's bed, hands tightly clasped and thighs touching, as Wendy traced patterns on the inside of Stan's forearm.

"How are you feeling?" Wendy said softly.

"Um… okay," Stan said, wondering if she thought he was upset about the game, too. No wonder Kenny had made fun of him. "Doing all right, I guess. No complaints here, really."

Wendy looked at him carefully. "Did Kyle talk to you?"

Stan's face fell with such severity at the reminder of his best friend that Wendy clutched his arm. "Stan? Stan, are you all right?"

"Yeah," Stan said, a few wisps of the old depressive fog beginning to cloud his consciousness. "You… what… what about Kyle?"

"We discussed you," Wendy said, without having the decency to look embarrassed. "On Thursday. I asked him if he thought you'd been depressed recently. He did, and he said he'd speak to you about it."

Stan felt hollow. The thought of Kyle and Wendy interacting without him there—even if it'd been about him—didn't sit right in his stomach. "He did?"

"Yes." She frowned, regaining some of her usual steely demeanor. "You didn't fight, did you?"

"No," Stan said—and then, realizing he'd need a way to explain it to her if Kyle was a little colder to him at school than usual—"Yes. Maybe, a little. You don't have to worry about it, okay, Wendy? It doesn't have anything to do with you."

Wendy dropped his hand. "Well," she said coldly, "I suppose it doesn't matter that I've been worrying about you for days, since it has _nothing to do with me_—"

"Jesus, Wends, stop. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that." Stan rubbed her shoulder awkwardly, and although Wendy's frown didn't dissipate she leaned into his touch a little. "This is just… it's between me and Kyle, all right? I don't want you worrying about it."

"Okay," Wendy said after a moment. Her voice sounded small. "As long as you—_fuck! Stan!_"

Stan watched her jump to her feet, nonplussed. "What?" he said.

"School! _School starts in fifteen minutes_! We totally lost track of time!"

"Shit," Stan said, getting up. "I'm gonna go brush my teeth."

"My perfect attendance record," Wendy moaned, shoving Stan's school things into his backpack for him. "I'll never win that perfect attendance scholarship with a tardy so early in my senior year…"

"'Salrigh', Wenns," Stan said, leaning into the room with his toothbrush stuck into the side of his mouth. "We'll jus' run, or—" He turned around and nearly collided with his mother on his way back to the bathroom.

"I was about to leave for work," Sharon said, steadying her son with one hand and jingling her keys with the other. "Do you guys need a ride to school?"

As much of a rollercoaster as the day had been for him already, Stan had to admit that seeing Wendy, practically in tears, catapulting out of his room and into his mother's arms was probably the funniest thing that he'd see for a while to come.

* * *

Kyle wasn't at school that day.

It wasn't incredibly strange for Kyle to stay home. He was diabetic; he just got sick sometimes. But this wasn't illness (it couldn't be; Kyle had tackled Ike just last night and tickled him half to death for beating him so badly at Trivial Pursuit). This was altogether too much of a coincidence. For the first time, Stan felt panic beginning to flutter in his stomach.

It took him until the sixth-period study hall that he usually shared with Kyle to get up the courage to text his friend. The last texting conversation they'd had (Stan saw as he brought Kyle's name up on his smartphone) had been before the get-together at his place on Friday night; they had been trying to organize a way to hide the beer that Craig had lifted from his garage until Stan's parents went to bed. Kyle had made a crack about filling Sharon's health-drink bottles with beer that was actually pretty funny, but Stan had been too preoccupied to respond. His fingers itched to form a retort, operating under the vain hope that if he did so he would somehow be transported back to Friday night, before any of this had happened, but presently he sighed, and steeled himself, and typed out _Dude are you alright_. Send.

There was a possibility, after all, Stan thought to himself, leaning his elbows on his thighs to stop his leg from jiggling under the desk, that Kyle was really just home sick, and he hadn't gotten into contact with Stan because he was in class and Kyle didn't want to get him in trouble…

When a good fifteen minutes had gone by without a response, however, Stan felt like his worst fears had been realized. Kyle _always_ had his phone on him, especially on sick days. In the past he and Kyle had kept a running conversation going all day, Stan keeping Kyle updated on what was happening at school while Kyle kept Stan up on what was happening on daytime TV. The fact that Kyle wouldn't respond to his texts made Stan feel like he was well and truly cut off from his best friend. Even when they fought, Kyle was mature enough to respond in some way to any entreaty that Stan would send him. This was awful. This was serious.

Football practice was a bust, as Stan fumbled every pass that he tried to make and dropped the ball every time he managed to get it in his hands. Coach had to take him aside at the end of practice and ask him why one of his best players was fucking up like a little girl who didn't know how to play. Stan had had to say that he was going through some stuff but that he'd get it sorted out as soon as he could, watching Cartman mimic his awful plays behind Coach's back while Clyde Donovan stood back and looked stonily at Stan from the sidelines.

"What the hell, Stan?" Cartman said when Stan rejoined them in the locker room. "You're 'going through some stuff'? What the fuck is that?"

"Shut up, Cartman," Stan said without any real malice. "I'm not in the mood."

"Don't bring personal shit to the field, Marsh," Clyde said frostily. "_You _cost us the game on Friday. You know that, right?"

"Sure, Clyde, blame it on me," Stan said. He started changing rapidly, missing the confused look Clyde sent him. Cartman rolled his eyes.

"Look, Stan, if you're going to be a weeping pussy about your feelings and shit, I won't hold it against you. I mean, you've been doing that since kindergarten, so it's only natural that you'd continue to be a weeping pussy into adulthood. But we have to work on the part where it affects _me_. A'ight, Stan?"

"Whatever you want, Cartman," Stan said, pulling his t-shirt over his head and picking up his duffel bag. When he finally looked at Cartman and Clyde they were both frowning at him.

"The fuck're you going in such a hurry?" Cartman said, a little put out that he hadn't managed to prick Stan's ire.

"Kyle's house," Stan said, and then he was gone.

* * *

"He's ill, Stanley. I'm sorry, but I can't allow Kyle to leave the house today."

"Please, Mrs. Broflovski?" Stan wheedled. "It's really important. Can I just go up and see him for a couple minutes? He won't even have to leave his room."

He tried for his sports-star smile, the one that seemed to make adults fall all over each other in their rush to help him out, but Sheila wouldn't budge. "I'm sorry, Stanley, but I can't allow that, either. He might be contagious, and I'm sure you'd hate to be sick with your homecoming game coming up."

_Bullshit_, Stan thought desperately, and Sheila must have seen an inkling of it on his face; her frown deepened as she started to pull the front door to. "I'm sure he'll give you a call when he's feeling better, Stanley. Goodbye now."

"God dammit," Stan muttered to the Broflovski's closed door. She knew something. She _had _to. He'd never pegged Kyle for a mama's boy—Sheila Broflovski had proved on several occasions that Kyle's long-standing terror of her was completely and totally justified—but he couldn't remember the last time Mrs. Broflovski had treated him that coldly. Could Kyle _actually_ have told his mother that—?

Stan's dizzying thoughts were interrupted by a huff of air and the scrape of metal against concrete. Stan spun around to see Ike Broflovski struggling up the driveway with a shovel as big as he was, a tartan scarf obscuring half his face. He was busily clearing fallen leaves away from the concrete, trying to look as if he hadn't been glaring at Stan a moment earlier.

"Ike!" Stan hopped off of the Broflovski's stoop and liberated the shovel from Ike's small hands. "Need some help?"

"No," Ike said shortly, pulling the scarf away from his mouth with one hand and reaching for the shovel with the other. "And I'm not telling you anything about Kyle, either."

"Come on, Ike, please," Stan said in a lower voice, keeping the shovel well out of Ike's reach. "This is really, really important. He's not actually sick, is he?"

"Of course he isn't," Ike snapped, ripping the scarf away from his throat. "Kyle's just _so special_ that he gets to stay home just 'cause he's a little _upset_—he's not the one who started kindergarten two years early—"

"Upset?" The bottom seemed to drop out of Stan's stomach. "He said he was upset? What about?"

Ike gave him an appraising look. "It's because of you, isn't it," he said. "What did you do? I thought he was acting kind of funny last night."

For once Stan was glad that he had a violent savant for a sibling instead of Kyle's preternaturally intelligent little brother. "I just want to know what Kyle told your mom," he said from between clenched teeth.

Ike snorted. "Man, give him a little credit. He didn't tell her anything; he just convinced her he was too messed up to go to school and locked himself in his room. Mom said he hasn't come out all day."

Stan sighed. That was one thing less to worry about, at least. "Thanks, Ike," he said.

"What did you do?" Ike repeated, but Stan was already jogging away.

* * *

The next day, Tuesday the second of October, Kyle still wasn't at school.

Wendy knew this was why Stan was so on-edge. He was constantly rubbing his arms or jiggling his leg or ripping whatever poor piece of paper he happened get into his hands into tiny nervous pieces, to the point that she took away his homework and gave him a napkin to play with during lunch. Usually she'd let Stan have a little space in the cafeteria, sitting with her girlfriends while Stan and Kyle and Cartman and Kenny horsed around at a nearby table with a variety of guys from the football and basketball teams, but today Kyle was gone and Kenny continued to be mysteriously absent during the lunch period, so she'd sat down with Stan and the guys, offering to get his lunch for him and unwrapping his plastic silverware after she returned.

Bebe, who was between boyfriends at the moment, had come with her, sitting across from Stan and Wendy and observing the interactions between them like so much animalistic foreplay on a nature show. "Damn, Stan," she said finally, reaching over to take one of his fries. "You look like hell."

"Thanks, Bebe," Stan said, scratching compulsively at one of his temples.

Wendy rubbed his back in small circles, prompting Stan to sigh and stand up, his hands clutching the end of the lunch table. Wendy frowned. Bebe frowned. "I'm gonna go get some more ketchup," Stan said, and he drifted away from the table.

"Seriously," Bebe said, staring after him. "This is all because he's fighting with Kyle?"

"I—I guess," Wendy said, looking a little more lost and confused than she normally did. "He won't really tell me anything… he just keeps saying it's between them."

"Well," Bebe said, raising her eyebrows and taking another one of Stan's fries. "That's pretty much par for the course, isn't it?"

Wendy frowned. "Bebe—"

"What _I'm _wondering," Cartman said loudly, sliding his large girth along the bench in order to insert himself into the girls' conversation, "is why anyone would suffer with that Jew rat out of the picture. I feel like I'm on vacation."

"You know perfectly well why, you fat fucking asshole," Wendy snapped.

"And you, Bebe," Cartman said as if Wendy hadn't spoken. "You actually dated the Jew, didn't you? Tell me, what was it like to bang outside of your own species?"

"Oh, Jesus, I didn't _bang_ him," Bebe said, as if the very idea was completely reprehensible. "We dated for three weeks in the seventh grade. We only kissed like twice."

"Ugh," Cartman said, shuddering a little. "Bitch, do me a favor and never put that image in my head again."

"Shut up, Cartman," Wendy said, although frankly the idea of Kyle and Bebe kissing was weird enough that she agreed with him.

At this point Stan returned and they fell into an awkward silence. Wendy watched Stan out of the corner of her eye with her hands folded in her lap, hesitant to touch him again in case he made another excuse to leave, while Stan sat moodily at her side without acknowledging her as he squirted ketchup onto his fries. His anxiety seemed to have been replaced by a crushing depression. Bebe and Cartman sat ogling both of them from the opposite bench while Token, Clyde, and Kevin, who made up the rest of the table, started talking loudly about basketball to diffuse the tension.

The silence was shattered by Butters.

"Hey, fellas!" he said as he leaned against their table, displaying his usual total inability to read social situations in the loudness of his greeting and the cheerfulness of his wave. "H-Hi, Wendy," he added, granting her a flushed, wavering smile that Stan, Wendy couldn't help but think, didn't seem to see.

Stan didn't seem up to much, really, his fingers curled listlessly in his hair as he dipped a fry into his glob of ketchup over and over again, and it was this that keyed Butters into the fact that things weren't quite right at their lunch table. His pale brows furrowed as he bent in Stan's direction, totally missing the hashbrowns that Cartman was flicking unsuccessfully in his direction. "Gee, Stan, are you all right? You look kinda down."

"Fine, Butters," Stan said without so much as changing his expression.

"Well, are you sure? Because—"

"Oh, Stan's all right, Butters," Cartman said loudly. He'd given up on pelting Butters with food and had crossed his large arms on the table, regarding Stan with a smirk that didn't quite reach his eyes. "He's just fuckin' _devastated_ that his buttbuddy Kyle isn't here to snuggle with him."

"I swear to God, Cartman," Stan said quietly, before Wendy could berate Cartman for his insensitivity. "If you don't shut your fucking mouth I will make sure to break each and every one of your fingers on the football field."

Wendy's mouth went dry, and Cartman's eyebrows shot up a little: of the few friends Cartman had, Stan was the least likely to make physical threats. Kenny had a mouth that was as dirty as everything he owned and Kyle and Cartman _loathed_ each other, everyone knew that, but Cartman and Stan tended to get on pretty well when it was just the two of them. Now Stan was looking at Cartman like he'd kill him if he just had an excuse to do it.

The guys at the other end of the table had stopped pretending they weren't paying attention and were openly watching Stan and Cartman stare each other down. Bebe began to inch away from Cartman on the bench while Wendy hissed, "You guys, _no_," under her breath, but Cartman's mouth was twitching with irritation and just a little bit of disbelief as he reached for a retort. "Please, Marsh, like you could do a goddamn thing to me without your wittle _feelings_ getting in the way. 'Oh, Coach, I'm sorry I can't play for shit, I guess I'm just _going through some stuff_—"

"I'm _warning _you, Cartman," Stan growled, his hands white-knuckled on the edge of the table.

"'I'm Stan, I'm too much of a huge, weeping pussy to play football,'" Cartman said in a sing-song voice, his eyes as hard as granite as bounced up and down on the bench and wiggled his fingers. "'I'm so pathetic that even my faggy Jew friend doesn't want to suck my cock for me—'"

Stan lunged forward; his fist would have connected with Cartman's jaw had Token not been ready to grab him by the shoulders and yank him back into his seat. Cartman leaped back anyway, stumbling over the bench as he swore to himself and cracked his knuckles. "Jesus Christ, Stan," he spat, "the fuck is wrong with you lately?"

"N-Now, Eric, you did provoke him," Butters said cautiously, while Wendy rubbed Stan's arm and Token muttered something in his ear about Cartman not being worth it.

"Whatever," Cartman said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "This is retarded. Screw you guys, I'm goi—"

"Yeah, fuck you, go home," Stan said darkly, shrugging Token's hands off of his shoulders. Cartman flipped him off and stalked away, followed by Butters, who excused himself hurriedly and ran after him, calling "H-Hey, Eric, wait up!"

"I _hate _him," Wendy said coldly, slipping her hand into Stan's and squeezing (after a few heart-wrenching moments, he squeezed her hand back). "I really do. He doesn't give a shit about anything that doesn't affect him—stupid, ignorant, racist—"

"That's just what makes him Cartman," Bebe said, ripping the plastic cover off of her tartar sauce.

"He's _horrible_, though," Wendy said, glowering at her best friend. "He is honestly the worst person I've ever met. I mean, he started that fight for no reason—"

"It's okay, Wendy," Stan said, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. "That was my fault. He says shit like that all the time. I should know better than to let him get to me."

"_Stan_," Wendy said pointedly, "you shouldn't just have to endureit if it bothers you." Stan shrugged. It seemed like his thoughts were a million miles away—_with Kyle_, Wendy thought poisonously, and immediately regretted it. It was ridiculous for her to be jealous of Stan's best friend, and selfish of her to think Stan shouldn't be bothered by it if they were fighting. She pressed on. "I'm serious. He's awful to you, and he's _awful_ to Kyle, and if you act like you don't care he'll think he can keep doing it. He's just so—God, there's not even a _word_ for what he is. He's just _disgusting_."

Bebe snorted through her fish sticks. "Wendy," she said after she'd swallowed, "just who was it, several years ago now, who came to me in _tears _because she thought she was attracted to Eric Cartman?"

Stan seemed to come to life. "_What?_"

"You bitch," Wendy said, trying to pretend that her face wasn't darkening with a hot blush, "don't fucking bring that up now."

"Wait, when the hell did this happen?" Stan said, turning to Wendy.

"Fourth grade," Bebe said, raising her eyebrows at Stan. "What, Stan, you don't remember?"

"Remember _what_?" Stan said, still looking at Wendy, who was furiously tucking her hair behind her ears.

"When Wendy kissed him," Bebe said, grinning. "In the middle of a school assembly."

"_What_."

"Hell, I remember that," Token said, and when Stan looked at him incredulously he shrugged a little sheepishly. "I thought you were there, Stan."

"He sure was. Man, the look on his _face_…"

"Must've blocked it out."

"_All right_," Wendy said, still blushing but meeting Stan square in the eye. "I was working with Cartman on some project and I started having these… dreams… _anyway_… I was having trouble concentrating on the project and _Bebe_—" –she shot her friend a withering look—"—told me that if I kissed him and got it over with it would dissolve all our sexual tension and the whole thing would be over with. Assuming no one _brings it up again_ _at really inconvenient times_—"

"Worked, though, didn't it?" Bebe said through another fish stick. "You went right back to hating that fat bastard."

"_Of course _I did, but—"

The bell rang. The noise around them amplified as the student body rose to leave the cafeteria. The guys at their table dispersed pretty quickly, Stan squeezing Wendy's shoulder before he left without a word, but Wendy grabbed Bebe by her long curly hair as she started to get up.

"What the hell was that, Bebe?" Wendy hissed. "Are you _trying _to get Stan pissed at me? Why would you mention that stupid bullshit about Eric Cartman?"

"Honey, Stan couldn't be pissed at you if he tried," Bebe said, removing Wendy's fingers from her hair.

"Then why? What's your angle?"

"No angle," Bebe said, smiling a little. "But I did get him to look at you."

Wendy stared at her for a moment before rushing off through the crowd to find her boyfriend. He was almost out the cafeteria door, his backpack slung over his shoulder, his head inclined as he listened to one of Jimmy Valmer's jokes.

"Stan," she said breathlessly, latching onto Stan's arm. Jimmy cut himself off mid-stutter and gave Stan a knowing smile before hobbling off.

"Oh—" Stan looked at her, surprised. "Hi, Wendy. I thought you had class on the other side of the building."

"I do—I just—" Wendy paused, trying to slow the frenzied beating of her heart. "I'm sorry about that thing with Cartman. It was a really long time ago, and—"

"Aw, Wends, I know that," Stan said. He cracked a little bit of a smile. "I mean, I was kind of shocked at first, but you're right, it was years ago, and I know it didn't mean anything, so…" He trailed off, watching Wendy's face fall. "… Wendy? Are you—is that all?"

"Yeah," Wendy said after a moment. "Go on, Stan. You don't want to be late for class."

"Okay," Stan said, delivering another strained smile on her behalf as he turned to go. "See you."

"Later," Wendy said, although no one was there to hear her.

She knew she should have been happy that Stan wasn't angry—that she was dating someone who was mature enough not to fly off the handle at the mention of her kissing another guy. Much less one that he'd nearly punched in the face about ten minutes ago. But—she clutched at her chest. Was that what she wanted? For Stan to be angry on her behalf? Did she want a boyfriend who was jealous and petty, who would revert to violent acts of machismo to defend her honor?

No, that wasn't it. Stan had never been like that, and she didn't think they'd be together if he was. But… her fists clenched in frustration and a little bit of hopelessness. _This isn't right_. It had never been such a chore to get his attention before.

Last year they'd seemed to spend every waking moment together. No matter what either one of them was going through, their relationship seemed to exist above it all. She'd felt incomplete if she was walking down the hallway and he wasn't by her side. Stan always had a smile for her, or a kind word, or a kiss when no one else was around. But lately… no, since summer… he just didn't seem to notice her anymore.

_Summer._

Her stomach clenched like it had been gripped by a vice.

She remembered the glare of the field lights glancing in through the window. The scream of crickets over the rumble of the SUV—Stan had left the engine on; she didn't know why—Stan himself, silhouetted against the window—his neck, his shoulders—

And pain. Too much pain.

Misery curdled in Wendy's stomach, threatening to spill over into a tightness in her throat and a wetness in her eyes, but she spun on her heel and backtracked to their table, where her messenger bag still sat next to the bench. The cafeteria was almost empty, the stragglers conversing idly or shoveling leftover food into their mouths, but Wendy still shoved past the few people stupid enough to get in her way.

This didn't mean anything. Anything at all. She and Stan had had rough patches before—they'd been broken up before, too, even if those spats had been elementary and middle school fare, brief and pointless. Their relationship was bound to change as they got older. Of course it was. They couldn't spend every waking moment together for the rest of their lives, and she'd be naïve even to suppose they could.

_But I love him_.

She loved him; she wasn't sure she knew how not to. And Stan—he loved her, too. He was just going through some emotional troubles, that was all; a bad mood stretched out into weeks on end, and—Wendy bit the inside of her cheek to combat her trembling lip—she would see him through it. She always had.

* * *

Kyle couldn't take it anymore.

Yesterday his mother had been concerned enough about his well-being to stay out of his way; she had come by his door every couple of hours and asked (timidly, for her) if he was feeling any better and if he needed anything, but for the most part she'd left him to himself, the reality of which he'd had mixed feelings about. Today, however, Sheila Broflovski was not about to let her son spend a second day at home feeling sorry for himself without at least finding out what had made him so miserable. She was banging on his door ever half-hour, yelling at Kyle to "come out of there right now" and "listen to your mother," to the effect that even with his headphones in and his head buried under his pillow he couldn't completely block her out. Finally, around 1 p.m., he'd slammed the door open, probably looking a little worse for wear. Ignoring Sheila's repeated inquiries, he'd stomped down the stairs, running a hand through his messy red curls. He needed to eat something anyway.

It was nearing 4:30 now, however, and Sheila was beginning to wear him down. She'd let him return to his room with the stipulation that he left the door cracked open, but this only gave her leave to fling his door open unexpectedly with some plea or another to "tell Mommy what's bothering you" or, alternately, "you'd tell me if you were doing drugs, wouldn't you, Bubbe?"

This time she swung the door open and had the gall to walk into the room and sit on the side of his bed. Kyle glared at her. "I swear to God, Ma," he said, his voice hoarse from a couple days' worth of disuse. "You come in here one more time and I'll jump out the window."

"Don't be rude," Sheila said sharply, but then her face softened. "You know, Kyle," she said, looking a little awkward, "Stanley came by yesterday."

Kyle shrugged, ignoring the way his gut twisted at the sound of Stan's name. He'd heard the murmur of Stan's voice from downstairs and had run to the window. He'd watched Stan talk to Ike in the driveway and then watched him leave. "So?" he said.

"He said it was really important," Sheila said. When Kyle didn't respond, she grasped his hand and said, "Kyle, honey. If Stan's done something to upset you this badly… wouldn't it make you feel better to talk about it?"

Kyle couldn't help it. He knew he shouldn't say it, he _knew _he would regret it later, but he just couldn't help it. "Not to you," he said.

There was shouting, and yelling, and even some tears, as far as Kyle could tell from the way Ike was bowled over laughing in the doorway, but in another couple of minutes Kyle had been grounded for a month and locked in his room again, this time with the provision that he wouldn't be able to come out even if he _wanted_ to. Kyle sighed with exasperation and a little bit of relief and flopped back onto his bed, intent on spending the hours until dinner listening to music and staring at the wall, but in another forty-five seconds he was back on his feet, stashing his mp3 player in the pocket of his cargo shorts and pacing around the room in tight little circles, his head buzzing with restlessness.

His mom was right. He had to talk to someone. He'd shut himself up in his room because he couldn't stand the thought of dealing with his family otherwise, but truthfully he was going crazy in here, where just a couple days ago Stan had… but no, he couldn't think about that. Except he _had _been thinking about it, constantly, since Sunday night, to the point that he was probably going to explode if he didn't unload on someone pretty soon.

That, or he'd actually tell his mom what was going on with him, the repercussions of which were just too terrible to consider.

The problem was that he couldn't think of a single person he wanted to open up to. Ike was a possibility, of course, but he didn't really want to be saddling his younger brother with his problems (not to mention Ike would more than likely use the information for blackmail). His mom and dad were clearly out—and there were plenty of people at school that he considered "friends," but not… _friends_. The kind of friends you could call out of the blue and spill your guts to. Except for Stan, of course.

He really should have been trying to talk to Stan. Stan obviously wanted to talk to him—he'd gotten several texts and calls yesterday before finally turning his phone off—and Stan had even tried to come over to see him in person. Apparently Stan was less of a coward than he was.

As much as the subject made him feel sick and helpless and totally miserable, his best friend was all he could think about, and the very thought of actually seeing Stan—hearing him speak, being near to him, having to speak in return—made his palms sweat and sent red-hot spikes of fear crashing through his stomach, so that he found himself curling into the fetal position, his nose pressed into his knees as he shook his head. No, no, no, he couldn't see Stan. Not right now. He needed someone who knew him well, who wouldn't talk about him behind his back… someone he was close to…

And then he fell backwards and accidentally smacked the back of his head against the wall, so obvious was the answer that came to him in that moment.

_Kenny_.

He grabbed his phone from his bedside table and turned it on. There were only a few more unread texts from Stan than there'd been yesterday—apparently he'd given up, which made Kyle's throat ache a little—but, crushing down a new wave of sadness, he sent Kenny a quick text without bothering to read any of Stan's: _Kenny I need to talk to you._

He got a reply within the minute. _man kyle I thought you were dead. come over._

Kyle exhaled shakily, too rattled even to laugh at Kenny's little joke. He slid off of his bed and into a beat-up pair of flip-flops before he remembered he was grounded. He doubted the sentence would extend for the full month, but his mother was definitely not going to let him stroll out of the house tonight to visit a friend. He considered for a few stressful moments whether or not he should text Kenny back and say that he couldn't come over after all, but the thought of sitting here by himself for the rest of the night was so pathetic that it made him feel nauseous all over again.

And dammit, he was seventeen years old. He would be eighteen in the spring, and then he was going away to college. Why should he care if he was grounded? Kyle grabbed his house keys from the top of his dresser and shoved them in his pocket, a new strength animating his slender frame. He had to start rebelling sometime, didn't he? He had to show her she couldn't push him around like she did when he was a little kid, even if he had to…

His eyes alighted upon his bedroom window.

Well.

He'd warned her, hadn't he?

* * *

In comparison to escaping his own house and enduring the anxiety that convinced him he was going to run into Stan on the street, Kenny's house was painfully easy to infiltrate. The screen door was cracked open, so Kyle walked right in, nodding at Kenny's parents as he passed them on the way to his friend's room. They were slumped in front of the TV on the McCormick's half-flattened couch and didn't acknowledge him as he walked by.

Stepping into Kenny's room after experiencing the rest of the McCormick's home was a little like reaching a save point in a video game. The odor that permeated the living room, which reeked of carpet mold and the rankness of unwashed dishes, was somewhat diminished by the familiar Kenny-smells of old cigarettes and Axe body spray. The walls were littered with lewd posters and magazine cutouts that Kenny had collected over the years, and the colorful strains of the local classic rock station could always be heard from the clock radio on the milk crate next to the bed. Kenny himself was seated on his bed with his back to the wall, legs stretched out and ankles crossed as he played a game on his old PSP. He was wearing his usual black hoodie with the hood pulled up over his head and a pair of denim cut-offs. Kyle hesitated in the doorway, wondering if he should knock, but before he could decide Kenny noticed him and grinned, patting the spot next to him on the flannel blanket that covered his mattress. "Hey, Kyle, good to see you. Play the next round for me?"

"Sure," Kyle said, and sat cross-legged next to Kenny on the bed. The game was a one-person shooter that he remembered them all going apeshit over a couple years back. It'd been a while since he'd played, but soon enough his still-shaking fingers slipped into the familiar key combinations and patterns as he remembered how to play the game, and his heartbeat began to slow. For the first time in two days he felt calm.

Kenny was lying on his side with his chin balanced in one of his hands, watching Kyle's progress on the level. "How'd you get that?" he asked, nodding at a scrape on one of Kyle's calves.

"Caught it on a tree," Kyle said, concentrating on the game.

"A tree?"

"I jumped out my bedroom window."

Kenny rolled over, positively shaking with laughter. "Why?" he asked when he'd recovered.

"I'm grounded," Kyle said.

Kenny snorted. "Grounded," he said. Kyle knew he'd never been grounded a day in his life. "That why you haven't been at school the last couple of days?"

Kyle's breath hitched a little in his throat. "No," he said, choosing his words carefully. "That was something else."

Kenny sat up, pulling his knees to his chest and crossing his ankles. When he didn't say anything for several pregnant moments, Kyle sighed and put the PSP aside. "I'm kind of… avoiding Stan right now, okay?"

"Shit, dude, I know that," Kenny said. "Everyone knows, the way Stan's been acting the last couple of days."

"_What_? He's—what has he—?"

"Hey, I'm no messenger," Kenny said, fixing Kyle with a hard-eyed stare. "And most of it I heard second-hand anyway. But you wanted to talk, didn't you? So talk."

Kyle bit his lip and pulled on the flaps of his ushanka. He realized he was blushing. He couldn't tell Kenny what had happened between him and Stan. He knew that now that he was actually here. Kenny was ready to listen to him, giving him a chance to speak despite his disinterested façade, but now his pulse was beginning to hammer in his veins again, his resolve shrinking under the stress. He sunk his teeth into the inside of his cheek, hating himself for his cowardice. "Kenny," he said softly, and saw Kenny's head incline toward him out of the corner of his eye. "When did we all grow up?"

"Dunno what you mean, Kyle," Kenny said a little brusquely. "I'm not eighteen yet. The second I am…"

He trailed off, seeming to think it was better not to continue, but Kyle was shaking his head slowly. "That's not what I meant," he said distantly, tugging on a lock of hair that had escaped from under his hat. "I mean, I… when I, like, imagine myself, it's like I'm still thinking of myself as a kid. But I'm not really a kid anymore, am I? I have all these responsibilities now; I have to go off to college, start my life… but what, haven't I been living my life already? What have I been doing up until now?"

Kenny shrugged. "Nothing wrong with being a kid."

"But I just feel like everyone else is so much _older_. Like you, you…" He trailed off, watching Kenny's tired eyes under his tousled bangs. Kenny probably hadn't felt like a kid in a really long time.

Kenny chuckled a little, breaking the tension. "Man, Kyle, aren't you just a big ball of contradictions."

"Huh?"

"Didn't you want to go to school out of state? Get away from everything?" When Kyle looked at him questioningly Kenny shrugged and added, "Stan told me. It bothered him, I guess."

Kyle smiled despite himself. "Does it bother _you_?"

"What?"

"That Stan and I always come to you to when we can't go to each other."

Kenny stretched. "It _should_," he said, rubbing one of his shoulders. "In fact, I don't really know why it doesn't annoy the hell out of me. But… you know, whatever. It's not like Cartman would listen to either of you whine."

"I wouldn't let him if he wanted to," Kyle said, disgusted, and Kenny laughed outright. "You know," he said, lighting a cigarette, "I heard Stan nearly punched him in the face today at lunch."

"No way."

"It's true. Clyde told me."

"_Stan_?"

"Right? I'd have told him he did both of us proud if he hadn't been spacing the fuck out all day." Kenny paused, his eyes resting moodily on his hands in his lap. He took another drag. "I tried to start a conversation with him in class today and it was like talking to a brick wall. Wendy's been throwing her tits at him and everything, acting like a real girl for once, and it's like he doesn't even care." He regarded Kyle with a sidelong glance that his friend, worrying his lip and gazing blankly at the ceiling, didn't seem to see. "Kid's real messed up over you, dude."

The corners of Kyle's mouth turned down a little. "… I don't believe you."

"You don't have to. It's just what I heard."

A silence stretched out between them for a few precious seconds before Kyle sat bolt upright, his face souring in a grimace. "All right. Jesus. Fuck. _Fuck_."

Kenny grinned through his cigarette. "Going to Stan's house?"

"Yes. Maybe. _Yes_. Goddammit."

"Aw, you'll do all right," Kenny said, closing his eyes and exhaling. When he opened them again, Kyle was holding out his hand. "What?"

"Give me that."

"Broflovski, I'm shocked."

"Shut up."

Kenny handed Kyle his cigarette and watched Kyle cough after he took a drag, his virgin lungs seizing up at the invasion of alien carcinogens. He was still grinning. "Those things'll kill you, you know."

Kyle glared at him and handed the cigarette back, still coughing. "Fuck you," he managed to force out.

"Yeah, yeah. Get going."

Kyle turned to walk out the door and paused in the doorway. "Kenny," he said, looking over his shoulder.

Kenny had picked up his PSP again, intent on continuing Kyle's game. "Yeah?"

"Thanks. Really. I mean… I really do appreciate it."

Kenny didn't look up. "Don't worry about it, man. You just do what you need to do."

Kyle left without another word. Kenny fiddled with the PSP for a little longer and then set it aside, staring at the cracks on his walls with occasional glances at his cheap-ass cell phone. At 6:53 he sighed, and stood up, and took a long last drag on the ashy dregs of his cigarette. He had an appointment to keep.

* * *

Stan was lying on his bed without moving again, watching the sky outside his window settle into dusk.

Both out of a desire to get Coach off his back and shove it in Cartman's fat ugly face, Stan had gone all-out at football practice that afternoon, taking responsibility for three touchdowns in practice skirmishes and several impressive interceptions. Coach openly praised him for overcoming his weaknesses and the team was expressing admiration for him again. He'd even gone the whole practice without hearing Cartman's usual snide comments. But all the attention had made him feel, if possible, more depressed; it was all too clear to him that he was only any use to his team as a tool. If he fucked up again tomorrow, there was no guarantee that their smiles wouldn't sour on their faces; that they'd jump at the chance to whisper about him again behind his back.

He'd been trying not to dwell on Kyle, but it was impossible when Kyle's very absence was tied into every last one of his ugly feelings. He found himself thinking about love. If there was unconditional love, the kind that dogs had for their owners and that parents were supposed to have for their kids, then he'd thought that he and Kyle had kind of like an unconditional friendship; no matter what either one of them said or did to disrupt the bond it would still be there, unchanging, because he was as much a part of Kyle's life as Kyle was of his.

But apparently there were rules, and he'd broken them. Stan rolled onto his stomach, pressing his face into his pillow. No matter how much he tried to tell himself that it was stupid for Kyle to avoid him, that Kyle was being immature and soon enough he'd come around and everything would go back to normal, he knew better. He'd fucked up, bad.

He didn't know if he'd ever see Kyle again.

As soon as he had the thought he dismissed it as ridiculous; of course he would see Kyle again. Kyle couldn't stay home from school forever, and when he came back they'd see each other in class and lunch and probably in the hallways and stuff. South Park High School was pretty small. But when they had to meet—what would he see in Kyle's face? Would Kyle look at him at all?

There was a knock on the front door downstairs, which floated up through Stan's open window. Stan jumped, but quickly settled back down into his comforter; his dad's drinking buddies were coming over tonight to watch TV. Someone must have gotten here early. That was all. The door opened downstairs; Stan was about to bury his face in the pillow again when he heard his mother's shriek carry in through the window: "_Kyle! _Oh my goodness, what happened?"

Stan shoved himself into a sitting position, his hands clutching at the comforter. He could barely hear Kyle's sheepish reply over the sudden pounding of his heart: "Um, yeah, hi, Mrs. Marsh. Do you think, um—is Stan home?"

Sharon made some reply, but Stan was already rocketing off of his bed and out the door into the hallway; he stumbled to a halt at the top of the stairs, nearly falling over the banister. Sharon and Kyle, who was leaning against the doorframe, looked up at him.

"Stanley! Kyle was just asking about you," his mom was saying, but Stan was watching Kyle's face. His mouth was open a little, his eyebrows knit under a few tendrils of red hair and the brim of his hat, but then he grinned and shrugged and averted his eyes, a hint of color dusting across his cheeks, and Stan noticed what had caused his mother's shriek when she opened the door: Kyle was putting all of his weight on his right foot and bleeding profusely from the sole of his left.

"Oh, honey, come in!" Sharon said, letting Kyle put his weight on her shoulder as she opened the door a little wider to accommodate him. "Where are your _shoes_?"

"Um, well, one of them broke," Kyle said, dragging his gaze away from Stan as Sharon bent to look at his foot. Stan began to descend the stairs. "They were really cheap anyway, so I just got rid of them, and—I think it was a broken beer bottle—"

"It's not very wide, but it looks deep," Sharon said, straightening. "We should disinfect it right away. Stan, why don't you take Kyle up to your room and I'll find the first aid kit?"

"Sure," Stan said. Kyle put an arm across his shoulders and Stan steadied him at the waist, feeling the warmth of Kyle's hipbone through his thin T-shirt, and they went up the stairs together without speaking. Stan breathed in the familiar odor of Kyle's sweat and listened to his slightly labored breathing, taking them as heady indicators that this was _real_, that Kyle was here in the flesh beside him, and had to bite the inside of his lip to keep from clenching his teeth.

They stopped in the bathroom so that Stan could grab a hand towel, ignoring Kyle's timid protests, after which Stan walked Kyle into his bedroom and instructed him to sit on the bed and put his injured foot on the towel. Kyle complied, not looking at Stan as he sat down across from him.

"Did you want to make a dramatic entrance or something?" Stan asked, trying to keep his voice neutral.

Kyle snorted, the noise coming out a little like a nervous choke. "It was an accident, trust me. It's my fault for walking around without shoes on in Kenny's neighborhood—that place is basically a trailer park—"

Stan stared at him. There had been an ugly little pulse in his chest at the sound of Kenny's name. "You went to Kenny's house?"

Kyle noticed the animosity in his tone and looked up with a frown. "C'mon, Stan, it wasn't a social call or anything—"

"Yeah? Well, excuse me for being a little irritated when I hear you're going over to Kenny's place without so much as answering any of the, like, fifteen texts I sent you—"

"I went over there to get him to talk me into coming _here_," Kyle said, sounding a little frustrated.

Stan's anger caught in his throat. The only word he was able to force out was "oh." Sharon bustled into the room with the first aid kit; she insisted on tending to Kyle's wound herself, and Stan sat there without speaking, watching Kyle wince as his mom applied disinfectant wipes and Neosporin to the area.

After applying a butterfly bandage to Kyle's foot, Sharon patted him on the shoulder and offered to drive him back to his house when he was ready to go home. Kyle smiled and thanked her, and she left them alone again. Stan hadn't moved once during the whole process.

Kyle sighed and leaned back a little on splayed palms. "Your mom's so nice," he said. "You have no idea how jealous I am."

"It's only because you're not her kid," Stan said, wondering why he kind of wished Kyle would go, too. It was almost painful to look at him. All he'd wanted for the last couple of days was to see his best friend and talk to him, but now that Kyle was actually in front of him, he was so uncomfortable that he'd rather just be by himself.

When Kyle shifted to put less pressure on his foot, however, Stan's heart twisted at the prospect of his leaving again. His hand, resting on his knee, squeezed into a fist, and he said, "Don't—"

"Don't what?" Kyle said, but when he saw the look on Stan's face his eyes clouded a little, and he sighed. Stan knew that sigh. It was Kyle's Serious Talk sigh. "Listen—" he said.

"No, you listen," Stan said, more tersely than he'd intended. He got up, closed the door, and returned to his place on the bed, where Kyle was watching him with dread in his eyes. "… Don't look at me like that, okay?"

"Why not?" Kyle asked, sounding petulant. "I know you're pissed at me, so I might as well—"

"What? No, no, I'm not pissed at you, I'm just… I'm really, really happy to see you, Kyle." And it was true, so true that it was a little embarrassing. He was so relieved that Kyle was really right in front of him, and the future that he'd been shaping in his head just a few minutes ago would never come to pass, that recognizing the feeling for what it was made his stomach clench with discomfort. He couldn't calm down; his body felt electric. It was so strong that he wasn't sure whether it was a good feeling or not. "… I'm so sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry."

Kyle looked confused. "Why are you—?"

"No, please, just… just listen, okay? I was selfish; I wasn't feeling like myself—but that's no excuse. I never should have pressured you into doing something you weren't comfortable with, but I was so… obsessed with myself that I didn't think for a minute about how you would feel. I, um…" Stan trailed off. He could feel himself blushing. Kyle was a little red, too, watching Stan closely with his mouth slightly open, and Stan dropped his gaze to Kyle's injured foot, needing to focus on something that wasn't his eyes or his lips. "This is all my fault," he began again. "So if you're mad at me I really don't blame you, but please—"

Kyle shook his head a little. "Stan," he said.

"—please forgive me, I'll never—"

"_Stan_," Kyle said, and Stan shut up at looked at him. The corners of his mouth had turned up a little. "Stan, I'm not mad at you."

Stan stared at him for a moment, then pursed his lips and said, "You should be."

"_No_, I shouldn't," Kyle said, holding back a nervous laugh. "Listen, I'm not—that's not why I was avoiding you." He paused. "Sorry. About that. By the way."

"Um… that's okay," Stan said, watching Kyle tug on a lock of his seldom-seen hair.

"I…" Kyle sighed and rubbed his face. "I was just… scared. You just—you came out of nowhere with this and all of a sudden I was just scared at the very thought of you. Like, right now? Sitting here with you? I'm—I'm _terrified, _okay? I thought maybe it would go away if I just saw you and we talked about this but I cannot calm down and I have no idea where it's coming from. And I _hate _it." He said this so vehemently that Stan's breath hitched a little. His friend's eyes were blazing. "You're my _best friend_."

Having said this, Kyle seemed to lose his nerve; he pulled on the flaps of his ushanka and averted his eyes, his face a hot, boiling red. "… I, um… I just don't know what to do. If everything's gonna be all awkward from now on, and we start… growing apart… I don't know if I could bear that."

Stan swallowed, hard. He'd been thinking about it for a while—he might even have first thought of it when he saw Kyle in the doorway downstairs. He'd been trying to get the idea out of his head, because he knew—logically—that it would probably only make their situation worse. But now his mouth seemed to be moving on its own. "There's something we could try."

Kyle's brow furrowed. "Huh?"

Stan sighed—a long, put-on, last-resort sigh. He was probably as red as Kyle was, from nerves and the cringing embarrassment of so much as _mentioning_ something like this to his friend, but it seemed like the words were going to come out whether he wanted them to or not. "I could kiss you."

Kyle reacted about as well as Stan had expected. He jerked physically away, pulling his legs to his chest, and Stan was unpleasantly reminded of Kyle's body language when he'd dropped to his knees on Sunday night. "Listen, I know it sounds stupid, and—and I _know _it sounds like more of the same," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose in an automatic gesture, "but there's a reason. Wendy told me—"

"_Wendy?_" Kyle said, pumping the syllables of her name with more venom than Stan had heard in his voice all night. Stan took one look at the betrayal in Kyle's face and realized his mistake. "You mean you—"

"No, I didn't tell her _that_, she just said—"

"Oh, you _didn't_ tell her something? What a fucking shock—"

"Jesus Christ, Kyle! _I _thought you told your mom!"

"Like I would fucking do that! I didn't even tell Kenny!"

"Oh, you _didn't_, did you?"

"No! I didn't tell anyone!"

"Well, I didn't tell anyone either!"

They were worked-up, breathing hard, glaring at each other, and for a moment Stan thought that was when he'd do it—that they'd be yelling and all of a sudden they'd be kissing like they were in a bad TV movie. But he didn't do anything, and Kyle wiped at his eyes. He was trembling.

"Well?" he said finally, grasping at his bandaged foot momentarily as he leaned away. "What did Wendy tell you?"

"Well, um—she said—and this was after Cartman left; I almost clocked him at lunch today."

Kyle's mouth curved, just a little. "Yeah, I heard."

For the first time, seeing that look on Kyle's face, Stan felt almost proud, but he wouldn't let his sudden upswing in mood deter him. He told the whole awful story Wendy, Bebe, and Token had pieced together for him at lunch, stressing that while he didn't actually remember this happening, everyone else seemed to, proving that his girlfriend must _actually _have kissed Cartman. Kyle made the appropriate noise of disgust when he got to that part.

"You know," he said slowly, tugging at his hair again, "I think I remember that happening… you _were _right there, Stan…"

"I've heard."

"But…" he paused. "Why does that mean we should… um…"

Stan bit his lip. He could only imagine the face Kyle would make when he said the words 'sexual tension.' "Wendy said how she felt about Cartman went right back to normal after she kissed him, so maybe if we… um… if we do that too we'll get rid of our sexual tension" (there it was) "and… everything will be fine."

"We have sexual tension?"

"I guess so."

"But… Stan." Kyle looked at him imploringly, a little desperately, and Stan found himself focusing on Kyle's lips as he spoke. "Dude, I can't _kiss _you."

"Look, I know it's stupid, but we have to do _something_," Stan said, ignoring the rate at which his heart was beating, ignoring the way that he was too aware of every gesture Kyle made; every instance in which he was incrementally closer or farther away than he'd been the moment before. He looked Kyle in the face and asked himself if he wasn't just talking himself into this. If he really, actually wanted to kiss his best friend.

Oh, Jesus. He really, really did.

"I just want to be able to able to laugh at this later," Stan heard himself say. "And then forget it ever happened."

Kyle looked at him warily. "Last time we do this?"

"Last time."

"And you won't try to persuade me to do anything else? Because I don't know, dude, it's getting a little creepy."

"Come on, Kyle, don't joke about that; I feel bad enough—"

"Okay, okay." Kyle closed his eyes. Sighed. Opened his eyes again. "Okay," he said. "Yes. Let's try it."

This would work, Stan told himself. The idea of him and Kyle kissing was ridiculous, after all. _Unconditional friendship_. One of them would probably burst out laughing and break the tension. There was no reason to stress about it, and there was definitely no reason to tell Wendy, who probably wouldn't believe they'd done it even if she ever found out. Still, Stan avoided Kyle's eyes, looking instead at his clenched jaw, the tensed muscles of his neck, and something occurred to him.

"Kyle," he said.

"Yeah."

"Is this the first time you've ever kissed someone?"

He'd answered his own question almost as soon as he asked it. It had to be. Kyle hadn't dated someone in years, at least as long as they'd been in high school, and it wasn't as if he had ever openly expressed an interest in some girl or another. He tended to keep that kind of thing to himself. Not to mention that the idea of Kyle kissing some girl was… well, it was just strange. Kyle, he expected, would blush or look away or make some kind of excuse.

Instead, he raised his eyebrows and said, "Of course not."

Stan felt like he'd received a blow to the head. "Wh—wait, _who_?"

"Um…" Kyle seemed to lose the tension in his shoulders as he frowned, trying to remember. "Well, there was Rebecca in the third grade… Red, I think, during Spin the Bottle; that was fifth grade… and then I dated Bebe in seventh, so—"

Stan leaned over and kissed him, taking advantage of Kyle's open mouth.

Kyle's lips weren't soft. They weren't slick with lip gloss like Wendy's, but chapped, a little torn where Kyle sometimes worried his lower lip with his teeth. Kyle's whole body stiffened; it seemed for a moment that he was going to pull away, but then Stan felt, rather than heard, him make a noise in his throat, almost like a sigh, before his eyelashes fluttered closed. Stan angled his head so that he could deepen the kiss, and he felt Kyle shudder a little (he was sure, _sure_, that his friend had never had someone else's tongue in his mouth), but then he slowly, hesitantly, brought his hands up to cradle Stan's head, his fingers intertwining with the hair at the nape of his neck, and began to kiss him back.

It wasn't a perfect kiss. Kyle started out toothy and uncertain, and they were sitting too far apart for the distance to be entirely comfortable for either of them, but there was something blossoming in Stan's chest and throat that staggered his breathing and made him want to probe farther and farther into Kyle's mouth, discovering his lips and the roof of his mouth and the shy curl of his tongue. Stan traced the indentation of Kyle's spine through his T-shirt, making Kyle twitch and arch his back away from Stan's fingertips; he traced the contours of Stan's jawline with his thumbs, crushing their mouths harder together, and Stan yanked Kyle practically into his lap, their limbs tangling awkwardly as Kyle threw his trembling arms around Stan's shoulders and Stan savored the press of Kyle's body against his. His relief at having Kyle with him, here and now and closer than ever, broke free of its discomfort and bloomed into full-blown, ecstatic joy. He broke the seal of their lips, pressing his mouth to the curve of Kyle's neck, and Kyle gave a gasp that was almost a whimper in his ear, making Stan crush his friend tighter against him—

There was a too-loud knock on the door. Kyle jumped and looked around at the door while Stan pressed his face into Kyle's exposed neck, feeling the pulse of their aligning heartbeats.

"Stan? Kyle? Are you both in there?"

They were both frozen for a moment, neither of them daring to speak, until Stan breathed out slowly and pulled away from the dizzying heat of Kyle's bare skin. "Yeah, Mom, we're in here."

"I'm sorry to bother you boys," Sharon said through the door, so guiltily that Stan wondered for a moment if she somehow knew what they'd been doing, "but Kyle, your mother has called three times since you got here. I tried to tell her that you'd hurt yourself and we were patching you up, but… well, you know how she gets." She paused, as if reminding herself not to make disparaging remarks about Sheila Broflovski to the woman's own flesh and blood. "Anyway, I think it's best that I take you home before she starts threatening to call the police. I'll go start the car."

They heard the sound of her retreating footsteps on the carpeting outside, and Kyle started untangling himself from Stan's grasp. "Jesus—" he was muttering to himself. "Christ—I forgot all about her—"

"Don't let her push you around," Stan said, leaning against the backboard. His voice sounded strange, kind of hoarse and distanced from everything that was going on around him.

"No, you don't understand," Kyle said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and wincing when his injured foot touched the floor. "I'm, um, I'm grounded—I kind of snuck out of the house." He missed the impressed look that passed over Stan's face, getting unsteadily to his feet and testing the ball of his left foot on the floor. "I don't really know what she's going to do to me, so… I better get home…"

Stan leaned his head against the backboard too, watching Kyle with speculative eyes. "I could drive you instead."

"No," Kyle said, a little too quickly; he looked as if he couldn't imagine something more terrifying than being alone in a car with Stan. "No, dude, that's okay—your mom already offered, so… that's fine." He must have seen something shift in Stan's face, because his features softened a little and he said, "C'mon, Stan, don't look like that."

Stan shrugged. "I don't know how I'm supposed to look."

"Like everything's cool between us." There was a dusting of color across his cheeks, but his expression didn't change when Stan looked at him questioningly. "… It is, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Stan said after a moment, smiling a little to show Kyle he was okay.

"All right. Good." Kyle hovered by the side of the bed for a moment, looking down at Stan as if wracked with indecision; finally he murmured "See you tomorrow" and left the room as quickly as he could.

* * *

Not every chapter will have this sort of structure, I promise. It just kind of worked for the first two.

I realize that there should be snow on the ground in South Park due to the show's own logic. My response is that it's early October in the story and that's stupid. It's the same reason I'm only obliquely referencing things like Kenny's tendency to die and Cartman's occasional attempts at world domination. They just don't fit very well into a (melo)dramatic story about high school kids.

Anyway. _Feeeeeeeeeelings. _… I'm gonna go lie down.

P.S. Please review. It's just polite. And it'll probably make my day.


	3. Chapter 3

Not a totally obnoxious length of time between updates, but still a good couple of months. Which may have been because this chapter turned out to be _almost thirty pages ha ha ha_.

There was more _football! _in this one than I anticipated, which is unfortunate because I really don't know much about football. (I watch it for the violence.) But I think I worked it out. I don't have much else to say, for once, so… _hooray chapter yay!_

Good Lives

Part Three

"_I don't mind losing self-respect  
__I've done it before and I'll do it again  
__I'm stifled tonight, which is fine  
__I've done it before and I'll do it again"  
_~ "The Kids Are Sick Again," Maxïmo Park

"Damn, Kenny, I feel like we haven't seen you in forever."

Kenny smirked and propped his feet up on his desk. It was a Wednesday, October 17th. The first period class they shared, which was a blow-off graduation requirement called Consumer Education, had yet to start. "Is that the royal 'we,' Stan, or are you speaking for both of you now?"'

Stan looked embarrassed, shoving his hands in his pockets, so Kyle took over, resting his elbows on the side of Kenny's desk and leaning forward over the chair he was straddling. "Seriously, though, Kenny, this is the first time you've been in first period for like a week."

Kenny shrugged and scratched the hair above his ear with a pencil. "I'unno. Busy, I guess."

Stan snorted and perched on the edge of his desk. Due to the South Park school district's revolutionary organizational system, he had had the desk in front of Kenny's in every class they'd had together since the sixth grade. "'Busy.' Yeah, okay. When have you ever been busy? Doing _what_?"

"Part-time job," said Kenny.

"Really?" Kyle said, looking stunned.

"No way," said Stan. "Who hired you?"

"I did," Kenny said. He twiddled the pencil between his fingers and rubbed the tip with his thumb. "Freelance work."

"The fuck? What're you doing, solving mysteries?"

"Bet he's got an ascot on under that hoodie."

"Or a fucking monocle. Sherlock Holmes hat."

"Or he could be a superhero or something. Like a masked vigilante."

"What? That's stupid."

"Wait, I know, I bet he's doing stunts for money again. Eating roadkill off the street and shit."

"What? Fuck you, Kenny, you didn't want to give us a cut this time?"

"Fuck you guys, too," Kenny said cheerfully. He was in an incredibly good mood. Partially because it really _had _been a while since he'd seen Stan and Kyle, but mostly it had to do with the fifty bucks he'd managed to make off of the janitor that morning before school had started.

Kyle sighed and leaned his head on his arms. "Dude, just tell us."

"Nah, I think you guys should keep guessing," Kenny said, tapping his lips with the pencil. "You were getting pretty close."

Stan frowned at him. "You're not doing anything illegal, are you?" he said. "I mean, like, seriously illegal. It was cute when we were kids, but… you know. I don't want you to get arrested or something."

"Aw, that's sweet of you, Stan," Kenny said, and Stan sighed the way he did whenever someone (usually Kenny) succeeded in taking him down a peg. "But don't worry. I'm handling it."

Something about the look in Kenny's eye and the tone of his voice—or perhaps the way he'd stuck the end of his pencil between his lips and taken a bit more of it into his mouth than was strictly necessary—made Stan blanch. "No," he said.

Kyle frowned at him. "What?"

"You are _not_," Stan said, looking downright shocked. "I mean, you haven't—you're not _actually_—"

Kyle glanced at Kenny and, catching sight of the look on his face, seemed to get it. He sat up abruptly and turned a little red, to Kenny's utter delight. "_… What_? Kenny, you're—_seriously_?"

Kenny pulled the pencil out of his mouth with a pop. "Yep," he said.

They both seemed a lot more impressed than he'd have given himself credit for. As if it was hard, Kenny thought, to give a blowjob.

Stan was shaking his head slowly. He seemed to have adjusted to the idea faster than Kyle, who was still looking at Kenny like he'd grown another head. "Jesus Christ. What the hell. And you came to us all freaked out."

"Well." Kenny paused. "Well, it's not… _sex_. I've got _some _standards, you know." Even if they wouldn't believe him, he felt like he had to say it anyway. "But it's surprising how many people will throw money at you if you smile real pretty and offer to get them off. So I started thinking—after I decided that I sure as hell wasn't going to do anything to help my deadbeat parents—that it wasn't the worst way to make money."

Stan's frown deepened. There was pity in his face, somewhere, but Kenny was determined not to see it. "And are you?"

"What?"

"Making money."

Kenny shrugged and dug his hands into his hoodie and jeans pockets, littering his desk with neatly-folded bills.

Stan stared. "Jesus."

"Kenny…" Kyle hadn't looked away since he'd learned about Kenny's occupation. Kenny didn't even think he'd blinked, and he felt the hard parts inside of him shiver at Kyle Broflovski's knit brows and big, searching eyes. "Are you okay?"

Kenny looked at him, dropping the mocking demeanor for once. "I'm fine, Kyle."

Kyle nodded, accepting his word. He wasn't pitying. He was just concerned. That, Kenny thought wryly, was the difference between Stan and Kyle.

Kyle severed his gaze, which fell onto the bills still scattered across Kenny's desk. "May I?"

"Sure. Since it's you."

Kyle began thumbing through the bills, counting under his breath, and Kenny raised his eyebrows at Stan, who was watching him with a less-than-friendly cast to his features. Kenny mouthed _what_ at him and Stan shook his head like it wasn't worth verbalizing.

"Fuck, dude," Kyle said in amazement, drawing their attention back to him. "Kenny, you just pulled like two hundred and fifty bucks out of your pocket."

"Yeah, the rest is at home," Kenny said, and he grinned upon seeing Kyle's eyebrows disappear under his hat. "I need a l'il chump change to be walking about with," he added in an affectation of his parents' drawl, and when they both shook their heads incredulously his grin widened.

"You _have _been buying your own cigarettes lately," Stan said, and he finally cracked a little bit of a smile.

"But you're saving most of it," Kyle said tentatively. A couple of years ago, if Kenny had gotten his hands on so much as a single ten-dollar bill it would be gone within minutes, spent on something cheap and worthless that he could nonetheless call his own. "That's not really like you, dude."

"Hey, taxes on cigs are a bitch nowadays," Kenny said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "But yeah, I dunno. I figure there's something I can do with it after I turn eighteen."

They were all quiet for a moment, Kyle lost in his own world as he stared down at Kenny's desk while Kenny twiddled his pencil between his fingers and convinced himself that he'd done the right thing in telling them the truth. Finally, he laid the pencil down with a definitive click and gave Kyle a sideways glance. "So what about you two?" he said.

It could have been his imagination—which, to be frank, Kenny McCormick largely ignored if it wasn't relevant to food, money, or big, floppy tits—but Kyle seemed to stiffen at the question, rubbing the back of his neck and looking away in badly-feigned innocence. Stan seemed less bothered, but there was still a shade of unpleasantness to his frown as he crossed his arms over his chest. "What do you mean?"

Kenny quirked an eyebrow. _Weird_. "Weren't you fighting or whatever a couple of weeks back?"

"Sort of. No big deal." Stan turned abruptly and eased into his chair. He began to pull his books out of his backpack and put them on his desk without looking back.

Kenny snorted. Stan was so easy to read. "So you're…?"

"Fine."

"Fine?" This was directed at Kyle, who started and smiled a little, more out of nervousness than any warmth of feeling. "Yeah, we're, um—we're okay," he said, picking up his bag and stumbling a little as he got up from the chair, which was actually Annie Polk's. She gave him a dirty look as she yanked it toward her. "Class is gonna start, so—"

"Meet you after," Stan said without looking at him.

"Sure," Kyle said, and crossed the classroom to get to his desk.

Kenny stared at the back of Stan's head. He seemed at ease—and if you asked Kenny, there were never very many reasons for Stan Marsh _not _to be at ease—but there was a lingering tension in his neck and shoulders that he only picked up on because he'd been watching his friend internalize his negative emotions for as long as he could remember.

Generally Stan was pretty sensitive—and frankly, when they were younger, kind of a pussy—but he had a tendency to pretend that he didn't care about the unjust things that he couldn't change, which had become more pronounced as they progressed further into their teenage years. That part of his personality had always formed a solid complement to Kyle's, who was outspoken and filled from his head to his toes with a belief in the inherent goodness of the world, a belief that had always brought out the best in Stan. But now that they'd had this strange upset, and the problem apparently wasn't the rest of the world, but each other…

Kenny rolled his eyes and took his feet off of the desk. _Whatever. Not my problem. _He was not about to start spending his time worrying about little idiosyncrasies in his friends' weird, almost too-close relationship. Their teacher entered the room, and Kenny laid a hand on the brand-new pack of cigarettes in his jeans pocket, yearning for the class to end already so that he could sneak out and have a smoke (and maybe earn a few bucks on the side). He had his own shit to deal with.

* * *

It wasn't so much that things between him and Stan were still awkward, Kyle thought. Nor was it that the sudden blowjob and the intensity of the kiss that followed had deteriorated their friendship at all. On the contrary, in fact. He'd returned to school the day after and he and Stan had been so casual, so in-sync, so completely _normal _that almost everyone had forgotten by now that they'd had one of their infrequent spats. The fact that Kenny had even asked about it had thrown both of them off, to the point that he'd felt some of that old awkwardness creeping back into the atmosphere as he sat across the classroom from Stan, squirming and throwing glances at his friend's face in profile. But generally, Stan and Kyle were better than back to normal, as Kyle found that he was seeing Stan more often than he had for months, even though he was still grounded, and Stan's depression was nowhere to be found. Stan would come over to his house after football practice nearly every day for the couple of hours that both of his parents were out of the house, and those hours were some of the best, and the freest, of Kyle's day. In fact, everything about his and Stan's friendship was the same as it had always been except for the habit they'd gotten into of making out, more often than not, whenever they were alone together.

Kyle had begun by keeping track of the number of times he and Stan kissed, mentally labeling the encounter "number two" when Stan leaned over while they were watching TV one afternoon and kissed him on the mouth, but he quickly abandoned the exercise as the instances began to increase in length and frequency. Stan was always the instigator, alerting Kyle to what he wanted with a brush of his knuckles against Kyle's cheek or a falsely casual look that lingered until Kyle set down his controller or put the TV on mute. But Kyle never pushed him away, reciprocating his actions so that the two of them would end up crushed against the end of the Broflovski's couch, whatever they'd been doing lying forgotten as they crushed their mouths together, tongues tangling, Stan tracing the contours of Kyle's collarbone as Kyle twisted his fingers with a surprising, sometimes frightening eagerness in Stan's hair.

He couldn't pretend that it didn't completely freak him out. There was the kissing itself, which he could've counted his number of experiences with on one hand before he'd started doing it with Stan. He felt like he was improving, knowing when to apply pressure and when to yield, when to use his tongue and when to reign it in, but he couldn't help but feel embarrassed by how much more comfortable Stan was with… it. Kissing. Making out. Well, of course. He'd probably been doing this with Wendy since they were in middle school.

Which was another thing—the fact that no matter how you looked at it, Stan was deceiving his girlfriend by doing this with him. It was only ever difficult to act like everything was normal when Kyle was face-to-face with Wendy and couldn't help but dwell on the last time he'd made out with her boyfriend. He knew he needed to bring it up with Stan, but every time he resolved to say something, his insides would lock up and he'd placate himself with the fact that there would be a next time. And it became abundantly clear, as the days wore on and he and Stan spent more and more of their time together sucking face, there _would _be a next time.

He'd never thought of himself as a timid person. (In fact, when push came to shove, he knew he could be just as obnoxious and abrasive as Cartman often was.) But somehow, when it was just him and Stan, he found himself hiding behind his own passivity—waiting for his friend to touch him and then reveling in the giddying, terrifying strength of the pure sensation that followed. He felt it so strongly that when he and Stan had to part, because of the time or the sound of Ike descending the stairs, he would often sit there in a stupor, embarrassed at what must have seemed like his own desperation. But he never kidded himself by thinking that he wanted to put an end to it.

Despite the many underlying issues that were beginning to simmer under the veneer of their relationship, he liked it. He liked this ritual that had arisen between them; this strange little blip in what was otherwise an old-fashioned, all-American, heterosexual best-friendship. And it made his insides quiver to think that soon, very soon, he would have to say something that would bring it all crashing down around them.

* * *

The afternoon of the day they'd seen Kenny in class started out normally enough. Stan slouched into Kyle's house after football practice, duly exhausted, and collapsed onto the couch next to his best friend, who was watching bad TV with his bare feet propped up on the incliner. Stan complained about Cartman being a dick to everyone at practice, and Kyle snorted and asked him if he was really that surprised.

"He's just being more insufferable than usual," Stan said, slipping off his shoes and taking the remote that Kyle offered him. "Bullying the kids on the JV team and pitching a fit when people don't cover for his mistakes and stuff." He began flipping through the channels and paused on a _Cops_ knockoff that involved a lot of bleeped-out yelling and wailing sirens. "I mean, I know why he's doing it. We've got the homecoming game on Friday and everybody's kind of stressed-out. It's just—"

"You wish he'd act his age and stop being a fucking baby about it."

"_Exactly_," Stan said, and to Kyle's surprise he flopped over onto his lap. Kyle started a little but didn't push him away, especially when Stan curled up on the couch and grasped one of Kyle's knees like his bony thighs were better than any pillow. "I'll be glad when the season's over."

"You want to win the game, don't you?" Kyle said, like everything about this was regular and normal, and for good measure he ran his knuckles along Stan's hairline, behind his ear. Stan twitched a little bit.

"Well, yeah," he said, "that'd be great, but it's not like we're going to advance to the semi-finals even if we do win on Friday. And this season has just been… I don't know. Exhausting."

Kyle cocked his head, focusing on the TV for the moment. A pale guy in a dirty wifebeater was being cuffed against the side of a police car. "Do you think you'll play next year?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"You know, wherever you go to school."

Stan shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "I haven't really thought about it."

He didn't say anything else, and Kyle, even though he sensed that Stan didn't really want to talk about this, said, "It just seems to me like you don't enjoy it the way you used to."

"It was never really about enjoying it," Stan said, and Kyle felt his hand tighten on his knee. "I have fun playing and everything; I know all the guys on the team, y'know, whatever. But you know how bad my dad wanted me to play football. And that sort of thing—like, high school sports and everything—that _matters _here, you know? There are guys down at the sports bar who live for that crap. Uncle Jimbo's been placing bets on my games since I was a little kid. But at some college somewhere… there won't be any of that. I just… I don't know."

"Is that why you don't want to think about college?" Kyle asked.

Stan was quiet for a moment. "It's part of it," he said roughly.

Kyle smoothed his hand over Stan's brow, fleetingly. There was a whole bunch of shit that he could say in response—advisory or reassuring or so corny that Stan would tease him relentlessly (if gently) until they both forgot what they'd been talking about. But none of that seemed necessary when he just seemed to _understand_.

"I get it," he said finally, softly. "It's okay."

Stan sat up and looked at Kyle, and Kyle barely had a chance to brace himself before Stan kissed him, his tongue pushing immediately into his friend's mouth. Kyle kissed him back, his teeth brushing against Stan's lower lip, and he was just beginning to get into it, hooking one of his hands around the back of Stan's neck so he could pull him closer, when he felt his hat slide off of his head and Stan made a noise into his mouth, a strange little deep-throated chuckle he didn't think he'd ever heard his friend make.

Kyle pulled away, embarrassed and more than a little irritated. "_Stan_," he said. "Give me my hat back."

Stan grinned in a way that was curiously childish and put Kyle's ushanka on his own head, pulling on the flaps in the same way Kyle did when he was nervous. "Nope."

"Seriously," Kyle said, shoving a few tendrils of red hair out of his face when they fell in front of his eyes. He needed a haircut, he knew, and it made him that much more anxious to have his head uncovered.

"You have got such a complex about this hat," Stan said, ducking out of the range of Kyle's reaching hand.

"It's not a _complex. _I just hate my hair."

"So cut it off."

"Like that would look any better."

Stan's mouth twisted. Every once in a while Kyle would make these deprecating remarks about his own appearance that implied some sort of self-esteem issue, or at the very least that he cared more about how he looked than he let on. He wondered sometimes if there wasn't some lingering fallout from that list the girls in their class had made in elementary school, the one that had (falsely) labeled Kyle as the ugliest boy in the class. "I like your hair," he said.

Kyle snorted. "Yeah, sure you do."

"I think you look better without the hat."

Kyle looked at Stan uncertainly, his hair falling into his eyes again. This time he didn't brush it away. "Really?" Kyle said quietly, as Stan pulled the hat off of his head, still keeping it out of his friend's reach. "Mm-hmm," Stan said under his breath. He kissed his friend softly, his breath ghosting over the swell of Kyle's lower lip, and then harder when his lips parted a little. But then Kyle was struggling, pushing him away, and Stan's brow furrowed when he pulled back and saw Kyle's flushed cheeks and the way he'd averted his eyes. "No… no. Wait," he was saying. "Just… wait a minute."

"What?" Stan said in a throaty voice, and Kyle had to shake his head to convince himself that he was right to go with his instinct. They couldn't be doing this right now. Not when Stan had just said something like that. Things were getting into a weird area. "We can't… listen," Kyle began, looking meaningfully at Stan, who groaned and pressed his face into the juncture of Kyle's neck and shoulder.

"Stan," Kyle said wearily. "Come on. Please."

The tone of his voice made Stan straighten up, although his dismissive look made it clear that he didn't want to have this conversation. "What?" he said, more clearly.

Kyle took a deep breath. "Should we really be… doing this?"

Stan shrugged. "Why not?"

"It's just… it's _weird_," Kyle said, brushing his hair out of his face with a frustrated twist of his hand. He really wished Stan would give him his hat back. "Neither of us is, like, gay or anything, so it's kind of odd that we'd just keep… y'know…"

The 'gay' thing had never really even entered into his doubts about the situation, but he knew it would make Stan think about things a little more critically—and now he was frowning, gripping Kyle's ushanka tightly in his lap without seeming to realize it. "Do you hate it?" he asked.

Kyle sighed. He was missing the point. "Stan—"

"Kyle," Stan said forcefully, for him anyway. "Do. You. Hate. It. I'm asking you seriously."

"I… well… well, no," Kyle said, blushing. He found himself looking at his hat in Stan's hands rather than Stan's face. "But that isn't—"

"Dude, look at me," Stan said, and Kyle did, taking in his friend's serious face; its solid bone structure and dark blue eyes. It wasn't fair. Stan was too good-looking. "Does it bother you? Are you going along with it because you're too polite to say no, or… or do you just not care enough to stop me?"

"No," Kyle said, almost insulted that his best friend would think he could be that cold-hearted. He wondered if this had been weighing on Stan's mind. "No, I would never… I mean… _of course_ not…"

"Because it's just that… I always—" Stan stopped, slightly flushed and clearly embarrassed. "You never… _start _anything, so I feel like I'm always—I mean, I don't know whether you really want to—"

"I _do_—" Kyle felt like his words couldn't come out fast enough. "I do, but I don't want to, like… break the rules or anything—"

"'Rules'? What? What do you—what _rules_? Why the hell would there be rules?"

"I don't know," Kyle said, although a small part of him was whispering, _Why _wouldn't _there be. _"I don't know why I said that, but… Stan. Listen. It isn't that I… dislike kissing you. Not at all."

"Then what's the problem?"

Kyle hesitated. "I…" Stan's voice was quiet, almost tender, and something in Kyle's gut squirmed at the intimacy of his tone. They were close, closer than they normally were when Stan wasn't sticking his tongue down his throat, and his friend's very nearnesswas making him sweat. "The problem—" And then he stopped, swallowing, because his voice was shaky and too weak to convince anyone of anything; "the _problem_," Kyle said when he'd collected a little bit of resolve, "is that this just isn't _normal_."

Stan looked away, and Kyle let himself breathe. He was frowning, chewing on the inside of his lip, and when he spoke it was in such a low voice that Kyle had to strain to hear him. "So?"

Kyle stared at him. Stan was by no means close-minded or conservative, but Kyle had always been the more deviant of the two. On the whole, Stan was pretty laid-back, but he _did _care about social mores and conventions. He did care what people thought of him. "'So'? What do you mean, 'so'?"

"That's it," Stan said, leaning his head against the back of the couch and looking at him imploringly. "I mean, it's not like anyone else needs to know. And if _you _don't care… and _I _don't care… then why should it matter whether it's normal or not?"

Kyle's breath caught in his throat. It was a convincing argument, even if the very secrecy gave him that prick he often experienced in the back of his mind when he knew something wasn't quite right. More important was the fact that by _anyone _Stan meant _Wendy_, and both of them knew it. Stan was willing to live with the deception—to pretend that it wasn't a deception at all—because he apparently got the same strange thrill out of kissing his best friend that Kyle did.

It wasn't as if there weren't several things Stan did with Wendy that he also did with Kyle, he figured. (He didn't actually know what Stan did with Wendy, or what guys did with their girlfriends at all aside from the obvious, but Stan was Stan. Odds were they watched movies and talked and occasionally played video games or sports, just like he did with the guys.) He and Wendy kind of shared Stan between them anyway, if he was being honest with himself, so really—what was sharing one thing more?

He could feel his hesitation wavering, and Stan could apparently see it in his expression; his face eased into a lopsided grin as he plopped Kyle's hat back onto his head, momentarily obscuring his vision. "We cool?"

"Yeah," Kyle said when he'd adjusted his ushanka. "Yeah, we are. Sorry. I'm just—"

"I know," Stan said, as if he actually did. "Don't apologize."

They looked at each other for a long moment, and Kyle steeled himself a little, his lips burning as he prepared for Stan to kiss him again, but at what felt like the last moment Stan looked at the TV and said, "The fuck is wrong with that guy's teeth?"

"Like forty years of chewing tobacco," Kyle answered immediately, and even as Stan laughed his heart sank a little. There was a trembling, seizing, fluttering feeling in his chest he wasn't sure he liked. He glanced at Stan, quickly, but there wasn't any sign in his face that Stan was still dwelling on the matter, so he settled back into the couch to watch TV and squashed the sudden urge to lay his head on his best friend's shoulder.

* * *

"He's _what_?" Wendy said, dropping her plastic fork into her salad.

It was lunch the next day, Thursday October 18th, and she was eating with Stan and Kyle. It had kind of become a habit—her girlfriends, most of whom were cheerleaders, had started taking lunches off to rehearse for the homecoming game, and she didn't mind sitting with the boys, anyway. They'd all known her long enough that no one tried to give her special treatment for being a girl _or_ Stan's girlfriend, and there was something about hanging with guys—sitting with her knees casually spread, elbows resting lankly on the table, yelling to be heard and punching Cartman in the shoulder when he was being a prick just like everyone else—that released the tension that sometimes gathered between her shoulder blades.

She and Stan weren't fighting anymore—or avoiding one another, or being awkward around one another, or whatever the problem had been that had made her feel like he was slipping away. Maybe the problem really _had_ just been between him and Kyle, and her input hadn't been needed at all. (They were certainly getting along well enough now.) Maybe she'd been over-thinking, over-sensitive; it seemed ridiculous now that Stan would dump her, as she'd begun to fear, to the point that it was almost embarrassing to think back on how concerned she'd been a few short weeks ago. There was a weight that'd been lifted from her shoulders. When she smiled at him now he smiled back, easily, the way he used to, and when he'd asked her to the homecoming dance a couple days ago, she'd agreed with conviction, and a certainty that their world had somehow shifted back into normalcy without incident.

That certainty had faltered somewhat, however, when she learned just what Kenny McCormick had been doing with his spare time for the last month.

"Man, I know," Stan said, his eyebrows raised in such a way to suggest _dude, Wendy, calm down_. "We were surprised, too."

"He's usually… um … around," said Kyle, who was leaning his head on one arm and seemed more absorbed in folding a paper football out of a napkin than the subject of their conversation. "Recently, not so much. We weren't worried or anything, since, y'know, he's Kenny, but we were kind of curious, so—fuck—" The napkin had ripped in his hands. He threw the pieces aside and pulled another napkin from the dispenser. "So we asked him, and… I mean, apparently he's been making a ton of money off it—"

"Give me that," Stan said, his lips curving at Kyle's efforts. He leaned his head on one of his fists, obscuring part of his face from Wendy's view.

"What? No. Make your own."

"You're doing it wrong."

"Like hell I am."

"No, really, you have to use paper or something; the napkin's too soft—"

"But that's so _dangerous_," Wendy exclaimed, interrupting their bickering. It had set her blood pumping through her veins, imagining someone she knew putting themselves at risk like that—and in a small, prejudiced town like South Park, too. What made it worse was that both Stan and Kyle, whom she normally counted on to side with her on these issues, seemed not to understand the risk. They were both looking at her a little bemusedly, as if they weren't sure what she was talking about. "Not to mention illegal—he could get into serious trouble—"

Stan snorted. "In South Park? Yeah, sure."

"I was kind of worried too, Wendy," Kyle said, meeting her gaze. "But Kenny can take care of himself. He'll be fine."

Wendy made a face. "Whether or not he can 'take care of himself'—"

"It's his decision, Wends," Stan said, interrupting her. "It would be different if he was being forced into it, but Kenny's always kind of done his own thing."

"It's still not _right_," Wendy murmured, but Stan and Kyle were absorbed in attempting to make another football, so she gave up and rested her chin on her arms, not quite watching the boys swat at each other on the other side of the table. She liked to think she was pretty familiar with Stan's friends—Kyle was around more often than not, and it was hard not to feel like she knew Cartman better than she wanted to—but Kenny had always remained sort of an enigma. He seemed to hover at the edge of their group, usually listening but never saying much, a smirk on his shadowed face and a lighter or a cigarette in his hand. She'd known him since she was four, of course, she and everyone else in their graduating class, but it wasn't as if there was anyone but Stan, Kyle, and Cartman who really made an effort to hang out with him. More than anything, to be honest, he was—and Wendy's face screwed up in embarrassment at the thought of it, reprimanding herself for being so close-minded—he was _poor_, just like his unemployed parents, who were well-known welfare recipients and alcoholics; he lived in the part of town most people preferred to avoid and dressed in clothes that perpetually looked and smelled like they needed a wash. She wracked her brain for a conversation she'd had with Kenny and came up with nothing, only recalling what her parents had said about him after dinner one night, a couple of years ago.

"I can't believe Stanley is friends with one of Stu McCormick's boys," her mother had said as she cleared the dishes from the table, sweeping the used silverware into a cloth napkin and stooping to put the leftover duck on the ground for the dog to eat. Stan had come and gone for dinner, as he often used to when they weren't quite as used to each others' parents. "He's such a good kid. I can't imagine what they'd have in common."

Wendy's hackles had risen almost immediately at a perceived insult to Stan's integrity. "They've been friends forever, Mom," she'd said. "Since kindergarten, at least. Besides, Kenny's not that bad."

Her father had looked up at that. "_You're _not spending time with him, are you, Wendy?"

"Well… no," Wendy said, "but it's not like he gets into trouble at school or anything. Especially compared to Eric Cartman."

"I heard that Mrs. McCormick was caught trying to shoplift from J-Mart a couple weeks ago," Wendy's mother said, completely disregarding her daughter's hint that Stan had friends that were much more worthy of complaint. "_J-Mart_. Can you imagine?"

"It's tough out there for some people," Mr. Testaburger said, returning his gaze to the crossword he'd been doing and shaking his head. "But… well. I'd have a little more sympathy for them if they at least tried to find work."

Now Wendy shifted uneasily at the fact that she hadn't tried to say more in Kenny's defense—and, looking up, started at seeing him suddenly from across the cafeteria. He was with Cartman, leaning casually against the double doors on the south side of the room, and although he was on all accounts a pretty average-sized guy he seemed small, almost vulnerable, in comparison to Cartman's massive bulk. All at once they looked over, Kenny's gaze meshing with Wendy's for the briefest of moments, and she looked down, blood beginning to pool in her cheeks; she knew they had probably just seen Stan and Kyle sitting across from her, but she couldn't help but feel that Kenny had caught her looking at him with pity.

"Wendy?" Stan's voice was soft and concerned, and she felt the back of his hand brush against her forehead. She didn't look up (if she had, she would have seen Kyle glance at Stan and then away, busying himself more readily with his mess of a paper football). "What's up?"

"Nothing," she said, straightening and tucking her hair behind her ears; she smiled at him, ignoring the shapes of Cartman and Kenny making their way toward their table through the crowd, and took his hand across the table. It was unusual for the two of them to show affection for one another in public (especially with Kyle there, in front of whom Stan had always kind of balked at acting "the boyfriend"). He accepted her hand readily, however, squeezing it so that Wendy couldn't help but grin, even as Cartman made room for himself on the bench next to Kyle and Kenny slid unobtrusively into the spot next to her. "How about you? Are you ready for the game tomorrow?"

* * *

The night of the homecoming game.

The field lights had been switched-on since about three-thirty in the afternoon, flooding the sky with a glow that was visible from anywhere in South Park and beating down on the high school football field like a beacon. The bleachers were packed, home and visitor sides, and the furor topside was second only to the swarm of activity that was going on below. Under and around the bleachers kids were lounging against the bleacher supports, playing music, sneaking beer and cigarettes: taking full advantage of the fact that their parents and teachers were too engrossed in the game to pay them much attention. Freshmen wandered the crowd in wide-eyed groups, giddy and giggling as they took in what was for a lot of them their first real high school party.

Kyle sat on one of the front-row bleachers, hunched-over and shivering despite the oversized hoodie he wore, which enveloped his arms and fell in waves around his torso. It was the beginning of the fourth quarter and his attention had started to slip from the game. Relying on the scoreboard to keep track of what was happening on the field, he began to watch the players themselves—how they moved, their posture, how each one of them registered stress. These were his classmates, his friends—he saw their names printed clearly on each of their backs—but there was something fundamentally different about seeing them suited up, under the spotlight, in their element. Even Cartman, whose sizable gut and fat ass were overshadowed by his height and the bulk of his gear, seemed almost menacing, stalking around the field in between plays and screaming barely-discernable insults at the other team. Kyle's eyes travelled over Clyde Donovan, oddly imposing in his uniform, Terrance Mephisto, who was huge to begin with, and finally Stan, who was taking a break over by the sidelines and had removed his helmet, his face streaming with sweat. As he watched, Stan poured a bottle of water over his head, the rivulets streaming down over his face and neck as he shook the excess water out of his hair. Kyle quickly looked away.

"You okay, man?" Token said quietly at his side.

"Mm. Yeah," Kyle said, shuddering a little and pulling his hoodie more snugly around his slender frame. "Just cold."

"Too fucking right," Craig said darkly from Token's other side. "My balls are going to fall off it gets any fucking colder."

"Oh, Jesus," Tweek said suddenly from the end of the row. "For real?"

"What?"

"Do your balls really fall off if they get too cold?"

"Fuck, I don't know. Sure. Probably."

"I don't want your balls to fall off, dude."

"The fuck're you worrying about my balls for, queer-mo? Worry about your own."

"Mine? Oh, Jesus!"

"Nobody's balls are going to fall off," Token said loudly.

The three of them were there to support Clyde just like Kyle and Kenny (although he'd disappeared pretty quickly after the game had started) were there to support Stan and Cartman. Kyle didn't feel totally comfortable sitting with them. Token was on the basketball team with him, so they were friends, he guessed, even if they never really hung out outside of practice, but the pull of old childhood animosities was such that now, at the age of seventeen, he felt out-of-place among the members of their old rival gang from elementary school.

Craig, Tweek, Clyde, and Token's group didn't go all the way back to preschool the way Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny's did, but it was just as curiously mismatched now that they were all nearly grown. Clyde, who was a great athlete despite the fact that he wasn't all that great at anything else, and Token, who was great at pretty much everything, made an interesting contrast to Craig and Tweek, who had become veritable potheads over the last couple of years. Craig smoked because it was easy to steal from his parents, who dealt to most of South Park's adults, and Tweek smoked because weed calmed him down like nothing else could. They'd probably smoked a bowl or two before climbing up onto the bleachers and now Tweek was starting to sober up; he'd been quiet for the most of the game, spending as much time playing with his lighter as he had staring at the field, but now his neuroses were starting to return. If Kyle leaned around Token and Craig to look at him, he would probably see that a tic had begun in the side of Tweek's mouth as he fixated on his frozen, ruined testicles.

"They're doing all right, though, aren't they?" Token said, rubbing his hands together to get warm. "I kind of assumed Middle Park was going to wipe the field with them in the first five minutes."

"Yeah, they're not sucking as much as they could," Craig said, rubbing his chin. Nobody could ever tell when he was high. Craig was just Craig. "They might even win. Cartman's got the whole visiting team terrified that he's going to sit on them and fart in their mouths." Token couldn't hold back a quiet snort, and Kyle heard Tweek squeak in disgust and terror.

He was following Stan around with his eyes again without even seeming to try. Each and every time his conscious attention slipped from the game, fixating on the chill or on what would happen afterward, who would throw a party and who would throw up or break something or become a new drunken legend, he found himself staring at Stan, easily distinguishable by the familiar arch to his neck and the way his body twisted when he threw the ball. He'd seen Stan play football before—hell, he'd sat in this very spot at games before—but there was something different about this time, something palpable and anxious in the twitch of his toes, the nervous shiver of his limbs.

Maybe it was the fact that, in all likelihood, this was the last time he would ever see Stan play.

A cold breeze tugged at his hood and he pulled it more securely over his head. He wasn't wearing his hat. It hadn't been a big decision or anything. He'd been tugging at his hair in the mirror, frowning at how long it'd gotten and wondering if there wasn't anything to Stan's suggestion that he cut it all off, when Kenny had shown up at his house and he'd left for the game without really thinking about it. As he sat out in the open, however, shivering and feeling curiously vulnerable without Stan or Kenny or even Cartman next to him, he had to tell himself that there wasn't something to Stan's _other_ suggestion, that he had some sort of anxious complex about his hat. It was stupid. It was a _hat_. There was nothing wrong with feeling strange without it, he reasoned, as the crowd groaned as one entity over some missed opportunity on the field. He'd been wearing the thing for as long as he could remember, after all; in first grade he'd had to push it up over his forehead in class so he could see the board. Of course it would become part of his identity. Of course—his hair fell into his eyes and he grunted in frustration as he tried to blow it out of his line of vision—of course he would look different without it, and of course he would, upon seeing his reflection, wonder for a moment who it was staring back at him.

Tweek made a noise again, in surprise this time, and Kyle's attention snapped back to the field. Stan had the ball. He was running. Kyle's eyes raked frantically over the field, trying to understand what had happened, but before he got it together he saw one of the Middle Park players, a huge, broad-chested guy who had about six inches on Stan, run up to block him, his arms wide open. Stan tried to dodge and the guy kneed him deliberately, viciously, in the stomach. He went down like a rock.

"_Jesus!_" Craig yelled over the referee's blaring whistle and the entire crowd screaming _FOUL_. Tweek had latched onto his arm, eyes wide, lips tumbling over some soundless mantra. "That was fucking _dirty_!"

Everything had taken a nosedive into chaos. Clyde crouched over Stan, winded and struggling for breath on the ground, while Kevin Stoley had to dig his feet into the green and grab Cartman by the arm to keep him from tearing into the offending player. Randy Marsh, shirtless and clearly drunk, was trying (and failing) to climb over the bleachers down the row, crying "_Stan! Staaan!_" at the top of his lungs. The ref and the Cows' coach had run onto the field, the former still blowing his whistle in long, earsplitting spurts, and after a couple more confused moments Stan himself could just be heard yelling, "I'm okay! I'm _okay!_"

"Jesus," Craig said again as the clamor started to die down. "What a dick. They're getting fucking desperate. Stan's lucky he's not barfing all over the field."

"Oh, God—" Tweek's voice was hushed. "You think—_ah!—_you think he'll be okay?"

"Well, yeah." Craig's usual monotone was only slightly bitter. "It's Stan, isn't it? Stan fucking Marsh. S'not like anything _bad_ would actually happen to him—"

"Kyle," Token said sharply. Both Craig and Tweek leaned around their friend to see Kyle clutching at his hood with whitened knuckles, his eyes like saucers. He'd barely acknowledged that Token had said his name, only glancing their way when he grasped his shoulder. "Dude. Hey. Calm down. He's fine, look."

Stan was on his feet, his arms pressed lightly to his stomach as he argued with their coach, probably insisting that he could still play. Kyle nodded slowly. His fingers loosened the iron grip on his hood and he began to register what was going on around him again: the whistling, hollering noise of the crowd, Token's hand rubbing tentative circles on his back. "Yeah," he said finally, before looking at Token and cracking a smile. "Thanks."

"No problem," Token said, grinning a little. Craig leaned his elbows on his knees, smirking, and said, "What, is that you over there, Broflovski, with all that adorable red hair? I didn't realize you'd traded your Jewfro in for a Jewmullet."

Kyle smirked back, pulling his knees to his chest. "You start saying I look like a girl, Craig, I might have to punch you in the face."

"Oh, yeah, like you're pretty enough to be a girl."

"Prettier than you, assface."

"Hey, y'know, that's a legitimate medical condition—"

"_Guys_!" Tweek screeched, about a stone's throw away from completely losing his shit. "_Jesus! Ah! _Stop_ arguing!_"

Token reached over and tousled Tweek's already messy blond hair. "Don't worry about it, dude. Everything's cool."

* * *

They won the game. It became obvious that they would in the last couple of minutes, as Middle Park fell farther and farther behind and the furor in the South Park stands because fuller and less-contained. Stan didn't score the winning points, but most of the stands were screaming his name—a testament to his injury and courageous determination to keep playing so late in the game. He looked stunned, excited, and a little freaked-out by all the attention, Kyle thought; he clutched his helmet to his chest and swayed on his feet as he stared up at the stands, seemingly wondering whether he should wave to the crowd or join his teammates in spilling a cooler of lemon-flavored Powerade over their coach's unsuspecting head, but his attention shifted entirely when a slight, dark-haired form streaked past Kyle where he sat on the bleachers. "_Stan!_" Wendy shrieked as she ran toward him, beautiful, positively glowing; Stan threw his helmet aside and opened his arms, and as they kissed in front of most of the town it occurred to Kyle that he knew just what Stan's lips tasted like, and how it felt when he pulled you closer and brushed his teeth, just lightly, over your lower lip. He sat stock-still, shivering, ignoring the arm Token had thrown around his shoulders and the excited vulgarities Craig was yelling in his ear, and felt his pulsating heart drop into his stomach.

* * *

It wasn't until Stan had to head to the locker room to change that Wendy made her way over to her friends, who were hanging out by Bebe's used convertible in the parking lot. Red was checking her hair in the rearview mirror while Heidi Turner smoked a cigarette in the back seat and tried not to cough. Bebe began clapping slowly as she watched Wendy approach.

"_Scandalous_," Bebe said, grinning at her. "Absolutely _shocking_. Was that your first kiss?"

"Shut up," Wendy said, shoving her, although she couldn't entirely banish the satisfied blush from her face. Stan had given her his letter jacket, which was warm, if much too big for her. Her fingertips were just visible at the ends of the sleeves. "What's going on tonight? Have you guys heard anything?"

"_Party!_" Annie squealed, apparently unable to contain herself, while Bebe laughed and said, "Stark's Pond. I guess you were too busy making out with your boyfriend to hear Eric Cartman screaming about booze and a bonfire." When Wendy groaned to diffuse her embarrassment, Bebe countered with, "I know you don't like him, Wendy, but the kid knows how to party. Seems like it could get pretty wild."

"I'm all right with Eric Cartman if I don't have to hear him speak," Wendy said dryly.

"Or look at him," Heidi spoke up, giggling at her own wit, while Bebe waved her hands in a 'simmer down' gesture. "Anyway, it starts as soon as everyone can get their asses over there, so we were gonna leave like… now. Do you want to come with us or wait for Stan? … Wendy?"

"What?" Wendy said, although she still wasn't really listening. Her eyes had fallen on a tall, burly-looking biker in a denim jacket and a shorter, slighter young man in a black hoodie and nondescript blue jeans leaning against the Dumpster near the back of the stands. The older guy, who had to be about twenty-two or twenty-three, was a South Park High graduate from a couple years back. He'd fallen right into the drinking-swearing-watching the game circle of men who sat in the South Park sports bar every night, and now belonged to a biker gang who spent their evenings zooming around South Park's narrow streets and catcalling the lined strippers who worked the poles at the Peppermint Hippo. The other young man was Kenny McCormick.

"Gawd, is that Kenny?" Red said, having followed Wendy's gaze. "The company that boy keeps."

"That guy's scary," Annie said in a low voice. "My dad said he got into a fight at the bar last week."

"More like every week," Red said, tousling her hair in the mirror. "What's Kenny doing, looking for pointers on how to be white trash?"

"Like he needs them."

"Wendy," Bebe said again over the others' titters, but Wendy held up her hand. Kenny was leaning away from the biker, slouching with his hands in his pockets, but the way he seemed to arch toward the other guy, looking up at him from under his tousled bangs, was somehow imploring. The man said something to Kenny, leaning a little closer than necessary; Kenny nodded, and they headed under the bleachers together.

Wendy felt a tingling in her extremities. She was having trouble catching her breath. It'd been one thing to _hear _that Kenny was prostituting himself—it was shocking, yes; she'd certainly been shocked. But there had been a part of her, the very small part of her that was a South Park citizen through and through, that had shrugged it off as nothing. It was Kenny, "that McCormick boy," after all; he was depraved and incorrigible and somehow inhuman. He would do anything for a few bucks. He'd eaten part of a dead manatee in the third grade because the whole class had dared him to.

But these memories, as confusing and frankly horrifying as they were, were colored with the veneer of childhood. Now Wendy was no longer a child, and she had just watched one of her classmates prostitute himself next to a Dumpster at a football game. She took a step forward.

"Wendy," Red spoke up, sounding frustrated. "C'mon, girl, are you coming with us or not?"

"Yeah," Wendy said suddenly. "I will. Just… give me a minute."

"What? Wendy—"

"Just a minute," she called over her shoulder as she ran back toward the bleachers.

She was blinded for a moment as she stepped under the creaking aluminum. The sounds of the crowd, still milling around the grounds, seemed muted in comparison to the roar of her own heartbeat in her ears. The grounds had been quickly abandoned by the kids who'd been here earlier, leaving nothing but trash and half-eaten hot dogs and pizza slices from the concessions stand, and for a moment, the space seemed devoid of anyone at all. After frantically craning her head, however, she caught sight of a human shape shifting against the darkness: the biker's spiked hair, the collar of his denim jacket. Quite forgetting her own safety for the moment, Wendy called Kenny's name.

There was a scuffle: the screech of boots against pavement, a male yelp. Kenny stumbled to his feet, wiping his mouth, while the biker fumbled frantically with his belt, already tripping over his feet in order to get away. "Hey… _Hey_!" Kenny snapped as the guy began sprinting away between the bleacher supports, still tugging at his pants. "_You owe me!_"

"Fuck you, faggot!" the biker yelled over his shoulder, and the rev of an engine told them that he'd reached his motorcycle.

Kenny whipped back around. Even under the scattered lighting she could see the clench of his fists and the cold flash of his eyes. "You stupid cunt," he hissed.

Wendy's jaw dropped. "… _What _did you call me?"

He didn't answer, picking his backpack up off the ground, and she stomped over, her feet connecting clumsily with the ground in her anger. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she said when she'd gotten within six feet of him.

He looked at her, a short, dirty look, and she felt her resolve waver somewhat; there was something different about him, something harsh and animalistic that she'd never seen before in her benign classmate—but when he turned to walk away she felt herself swell with a fresh wave of irritation. "_Hey! _I'm talking to you!"

He ignored her, his form dappled by the glow from the field lights slanting in through the cracks in the bleachers, and she found herself chasing after him, grabbing at the baggy sleeve of his hoodie to make him pay attention. "Kenny—"

Kenny turned around suddenly and jerked his sleeve out of her grasp; Wendy stumbled and would have fallen into him had she not shrunken away suddenly at the look on his face. "_What_."

Wendy swallowed and her hands grasped at the ends of Stan's letter jacket. She had been angry two seconds ago, enough perhaps to give him a piece of her mind for his indiscretions and for calling her that disgusting word, but nothing, _nothing_, could compare to the fury in Kenny's face at that moment, the dim, infrequent lighting carving his features into something grotesque and violent as his eyes bulged at her out of the darkness. His shoulders, bony but unequivocally masculine under his dirty hoodie, seemed to tremble with repressed activity. She was sure for a moment he was going to hit her, and she couldn't help but cringe into herself the slightest bit, her head dipping and her dark hair falling inconsequentially over her shoulders to cover her face—but perhaps he'd seen the fear in her and felt shamed by the idea, because his face softened a little and he ran his fingers through his crop of dirty blond hair, more sullen and frustrated now than angry. "… What do you want?"

"You…" Wendy bit the inside of her lip and felt a little of her purposefulness return. "You shouldn't be doing this."

"Doing what," Kenny said flatly, shoving his hands into his pockets and leaning away from her.

"Giving head to some… _homophobic redneck_ under the bleachers at a football game," Wendy snapped, relishing the weight of the words in her mouth. Kenny's eyebrows had shot up; he apparently hadn't expected her to be so frank, and she felt the slightest curl of pride in her chest at the fact that she'd been able to surprise him. "For _money_. You don't see a problem with that?"

He cocked his head, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and as he lit up she could see the mocking derision on his face. "Should I?"

"It's illegal, for one thing, and dangerous; any one of these guys could beat the shit out of you or give you some disease, and…" She didn't know where her words were coming from anymore; her face felt flushed and she could feel the speech bubbling up from under her tongue like it had been spirited directly into her mouth. "And you deserve better than this."

He snorted, bringing his cigarette hand up to cradle his mouth. The lit cherry revealed the amused twist of his lips and the hard set of his eyes. "Well, listen to you," he said, and Wendy felt her face grow hotter. "You get a rush from your boyfriend winning the big game and decide to do some charity on the side?"

Wendy pressed her fingers briefly to the front of Stan's jacket, wishing she'd thought to give it to Bebe. "No," she said, "I've been meaning to speak to you. After Stan told me what you were doing—"

Kenny sighed and rolled his eyes. "_Dammit_, Stan…"

"I'm _glad _he told me!" Wendy said hotly. "Frankly, I don't think he and Kyle are nearly concerned enough—"

"Or maybe they just know me a little better than you do," Kenny said, leaning towards her a little; she caught the smell of his cigarette and something else underneath it that may have been Kenny himself, sweet and musty, like faded cologne and old orange peels. She turned half-away. "Did that ever cross your mind?"

Her tongue felt thick in her mouth as she tried to formulate an answer. They both glanced at the parking lot at the sound of a car horn. "You're keepin' your ride waiting," Kenny said, almost in her ear, and she glared at him even as she heard Bebe's and Red's voices, as if from far away, calling her name.

"Well?" Kenny said, his eyes mocking, and although it was unreasonable, and she knew she could have come up with a proper argument if he'd only given her another minute, all she could think to do was mumble "Fuck you" under her breath and turn on her heel, sprinting off between the bleacher supports to rejoin her friends. Kenny watched her go with dull eyes, then glanced distastefully at the cigarette in his hand and crushed it underfoot.

"What the hell was that all about?" Bebe asked blankly as Wendy hopped into the backseat of the convertible, shoving Heidi and Annie into the opposite door as she attempted to get herself situated.

"Nothing," Wendy said harshly, and when Bebe caught sight of her face she raised her eyebrows and turned back to the wheel, knowing better than to press the issue. "Let's get out of here."

* * *

Stark's Pond had undergone more than a few renovations since they were kids. In fourth grade it had been steamrollered and turned into a Wall-Mart, which the townspeople had burned down, and then an upscale Jim's Drug, which the townspeople had also burned down, and after existing as a charred, toxic dump for a couple of years the mayor had had it cleaned up and beautified in an attempt to turn South Park into a tourist attraction. When this scheme failed, just like all the others, the plot of land had become overgrown and largely forgotten about. Nowadays it looked roughly the same as it had in the old days, and it was frequented for the most part by the same people: little kids who liked to play on the ice in the winter months and teenagers looking for a place to drink and fuck and break the law where their parents wouldn't think to find them.

Stan was having a pretty shitty time at the party. Not that there was anything about it that _objectively _sucked. There was a bonfire. Kevin had driven his crappy old pickup truck onto the grass and was blasting the top 40 out the open doors and windows, so they had music. They had booze: someone had stolen a couple of thirty-packs of beer from a dad or an older brother, and Kenny had assured them that he'd bring another, whenever he decided to show up. They'd had parties like this one all summer that it still made him smile to think of now: everyone tipsy, dancing, laughing until they were dizzy and winded on the ground. Clyde and Token catching Tweek off-guard and tossing him into the water. Bebe challenging the guys to a shotgunning contest and winning, hands down. Sitting with Wendy and feeling her slip her hand into his, secretly, like a promise.

Tonight, however, just felt… lackluster. The victory itself had been explosive, ecstatic; he'd remembered what he'd liked about football in the first place, leading him to think that yes, maybe he _would_ continue to play in college, wherever that ended up being. But his mood had steadily declined from his public kiss with Wendy to now, so that the present Stan, sitting at a picnic table surrounded by chattering classmates, could not have felt more apathetic about where he was and what he was doing any more than he already did.

His logical mind told him that it had everything to do with Wendy. She hadn't stayed long. He'd shown up at the party with Kyle and Cartman, who had bickered the whole trip over, and had looked for Wendy with the hope that she would help buoy his quickly plummeting mood. She'd been caustic, however, and quick to irritate; Stan hadn't really known what to do with her. Her girlfriends seemed to be at a loss as well, which had resulted in her leaving within twenty minutes of his arrival.

"It isn't you," she'd said when he walked her to the street. "I'm sorry, Stan. I'm just in a really awful mood."

"Can I help?" he'd asked, even though he didn't feel like he had much cheer to spare.

"No, it's… don't worry about it, okay?" She'd kissed him on the cheek and given him back his letter jacket. "Have fun. And congratulations."

And he wasn't worrying about it, really. Wendy just got into moods sometimes. He'd learned when to comfort her and when she actually just needed some space. He wished she wouldn't have gotten into a 'mood' at a party that was technically partially in his honor, but he wasn't concerned about it being his fault. She'd meant it when she kissed him earlier that night.

No, what was actually bothering him was something else entirely.

He'd first transitioned from elation to confusion when he met up with Kyle after the game and Kyle had seemed less than overjoyed to see him. Instead of returning Stan's grin he'd smiled tightly at him, almost uncomfortably, and said, "Good job, dude."

Not that he'd expected Kyle to heap praise on him or anything. But it was harder to feel as good about his performance in the game when his best friend seemed not to care—and when it became clear that Kyle didn't feel like hanging out at all, avoiding his gaze when they spoke and ignoring him almost completely on the car ride over, Stan had begun entertaining the notion of getting Cartman to pull over and let him go home by himself.

That wouldn't have worked either, he reasoned—he was a celebrity at this party. If he'd tried to go home, there probably would have been a committee delegated to going over to his house and forcibly dragging him back out. People he barely knew kept coming over and congratulating him on his victory—like it was just his victory—as if they were the best of friends, and his injury, which had stopped hurting about ten minutes after the guy had kneed him, was practically a cause célèbre. People would suggest that he try legal action, that they should all go over to Middle Park and fuck up their stands as a way of vengeance, and Stan couldn't possibly say that he didn't care one way or the other. It was the kind of thing that Kyle would have found incredibly funny—if Kyle weren't sitting at a picnic bench fifty feet away, talking to people Stan _knew _he didn't like instead of spending the evening with his best friend.

"Stan," Bebe said, touching him briefly on the knee for comfort. She was with her new boyfriend, a kid in a leather jacket who looked scared shitless to be hanging out with a bunch of seniors. "You're looking pretty glum, chum."

Stan cracked a smile. "Thanks, Bebe."

"Dude, Stan, are you _sure _you don't want to go check out that bonfire?" Cartman said, craning his neck around to get a better look at it through the crowds of people. "It looks fucking sweet. I mean, I helped build it, so I _know _it's fucking sweet. We could set some freshmen on fire or something."

"Nnn… no, dude, that's okay," Stan said. "You go ahead, I'll be fine."

Cartman shrugged and popped open another beer. "Nah," he said. "More bitches over here anyway."

"Cartman, you are _such _a pig," Heidi said, knocking into Stan with a beer can clutched in her hand. He wondered how many she'd had. "Why do you gotta call us 'bitches' all the time?"

"Because bitches are bitches, ho," Cartman said easily, clinking his can against Craig's, who had lifted it with a wry grin. Tweek was sitting next to him and had calmed down again, which might have had something to do with the lit joint in his hand. "Tweek, bro, you want to give me a hit of that shit?"

"Hell no, dude," Tweek said calmly before taking another drag and holding it in.

Stan was only half-paying attention to what was going on around him, accepting a beer from Cartman and popping it open without really looking at him. He would feel Kyle's eyes on him sometimes—that familiar, watchful gaze that he would have been able to sense in his sleep—but when he turned his eyes on his best friend Kyle would be looking away again.

It was irritating, that was all, since he couldn't even begin to guess what he had done wrong.

Bebe rested one of her boots on the bench next to Stan and leaned over in a show of checking the lacing that ran up the back. "Kyle?" she asked.

"What about him?" Stan said.

"You're staring at him an awful lot." When he didn't respond, she said, "You could just go over and talk to him, you know."

Stan shrugged. "He doesn't seem to want me to."

"So he's being a little bitch about something," Bebe said, straightening. She and Kyle weren't each other's biggest fans. "Seriously, your mopey attitude is bringing everybody down."

Stan glared at her, and would have said something about not _asking _everybody to hang around him when he felt like moping, had a commotion not announced a new arrival to their party.

"Kenny!" Cartman exclaimed, sounding much happier to see him than he would if he were entirely sober. "Where the hell have you been?"

Kenny, sour-faced and brooding, hopped onto the picnic table next to Stan. "Had to walk," he said shortly. "My ride bailed."

Cartman waved this away. "But what about the beer?"

Kenny's face twisted into a peculiar expression that almost passed for a smile. "My ride was also my buyer," he said.

Heidi giggled. Stan could feel her nails on his shoulder through his jacket. "You guys know somewhere else we could get beer, don't you?"

"I guess," said Stan. He didn't feel much like drinking. He was only halfway through his second beer, and what he'd already swallowed was sitting like a weight in his stomach. His wandering gaze latched onto Kyle again, who was talking to Token with a drink dangling carelessly from his hand. Kyle glanced at him and then away again, quickly, and took a long swig from the can. Stan frowned.

"Heidi," Bebe said sweetly, leaving her boyfriend's side to tug on her friend's arm. Heidi pouted a little and moved away from Stan. "I don't think you need anything else to drink."

"I just think it would be _fun_, Bebe," Heidi said petulantly. "I like to have _fun _at parties. Right, Stan?"

"Huh?" Stan said, his eyes still on Kyle.

"Of course Stan likes to have fun at parties," Bebe said, her manicured nails digging into Heidi's wrist. "But he's probably a little sad since Wendy isn't here, don't you think?"

"Well, obviously," Heidi said, prying Bebe's hand off of her arm. "That's why I'm trying to cheer him up, Bebe, duh."

"Where _is _your ho, anyway?" Cartman asked Stan after downing the rest of his fifth can. He immediately popped open his sixth and began drinking again, a veritable bottomless pit.

"Home," Stan said, shrugging. "She went back a while ago. Seemed like something was bothering her."

"Yeah, and I wonder what _that_ could be," Heidi said, putting her hands on her hips and frowning at Kenny. Stan raised his eyebrows and also looked at Kenny.

Kenny stared at her, seemingly avoiding Stan's gaze. "What?"

"You know what! She was fine after the game, and then she went over to talk to _you _for some godforsaken reason and was all, like, _pissy _on the ride over here. What did you say to her?"

Everyone was looking at Kenny now. He shrugged, looking down the way he did when he was nervous. "Man, fuck if I know. She came over all pissed off or whatever and scared off my ride." He gave Stan a significant glance, but Stan just frowned at him like he didn't know what he meant. "I may or may not have been a little short with her. You try listening to some broad yapping at you when she just cost you a ride and a free case of beer."

Heidi gave him her worst look. "You're disgusting, Kenny McCormick."

Kenny smirked at her and took a swig of Stan's beer. "S'what I'm here for, babe."

"Even if we had more booze it would just get confiscated," Craig said flatly, bringing the conversation back around to what was important. "You know Barbrady and his pig squad are gonna show up pretty soon and try to book us."

"Then what the fuck are we sitting around for?" Cartman leaped off of the picnic table, stumbling a little in his inebriation. "_Conga line! Mosh pit! Let's go! Bring the beer!_"

Everyone grumbled a little at being ordered around by Eric Cartman, but the crowd around the table began to disperse and wander toward the bonfire at the pond-front, which was the center of the party proper; Craig and Clyde carried what was left of the 30-pack between them, throwing cans at people who called for beer and then roaring with laughter when the cans landed on the ground and burst. Stan got up to follow, his gaze glancing upon Kyle again, but then Kenny laid a hand on his arm and said, "Dude. Walk with me."

Stan glanced at Kyle again, who was talking to Kevin and Jason at the other table and laughing at something the latter had said. He looked like he'd had more than a beer and a half. "Sure," he said, and followed Kenny away from the crowd.

"You know, you probably shouldn't say stuff like that about Wendy," he said presently, when they'd walked in silence for almost a minute.

Kenny snorted. "Is that all you're going to say?" he said, taking another swig of Stan's beer. "Most guys would've punched me in the face for saying that shit about his girlfriend."

"Wendy doesn't need me to fight her battles for her," Stan said, shrugging. "I mean, if I happened to _tell _her what you'd been saying I would watch your back, but…"

"Yeah, you tell her a lot, don't you?" Kenny said, and when Stan looked at him questioningly Kenny sighed. "You didn't happen to tell her anything about _me_, did you?"

"Oh," Stan said. "Um."

"Think hard, Stan."

"… _Oh_. Jesus."

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry, dude, it just kind of… came up in conversation—"

"In conversation. Okay."

"I didn't think she would actually—"

"Yeah, well, apparently she would. And did." Kenny was quiet for a moment, then said, almost hesitatingly, "You don't ever, like… talk about me to her or anything, do you?"

Stan frowned. "About you?" he said. "No, not really. Like what?"

"Like… I don't know, whatever. Stuff. Anything."

Stan considered for a moment. "No," he said again. "I don't think so. Maybe in passing. Why, did she say something that pissed you off? Because dude, I'm sorry; I love her and everything but I know she can be kind of insensitive sometimes. She means well, you know?"

"Yeah," Kenny said. He shook his head. "Just forget about it."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." Kenny pulled his hood more securely over his head. "She's not gonna, like… try to turn me in or anything, is she?"

"No," Stan said after a moment. "I mean, I'll talk to her, but I doubt she would."

"Good. Man—" He rubbed his eyes, which seemed incredibly tired. "I've gotta think twice about telling you and Kyle anything now."

"Don't say that," Stan said, even though Kenny had been half-joking. Kenny's hand lowered slowly as he watched Stan with a wary look in his eye. "Look, man, I know you think we can't relate to you or whatever, but… we care about you, all right? Don't feel like you have to shut us out."

Kenny looked almost embarrassed. "Jesus, Marsh, way to girl out on me," he muttered, and when Stan opened his mouth in protest Kenny shook his head and put up a hand to stop him "No, I… I get it. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Kenny looked away. "And tell Kyle thanks for me, too."

"Well, I… um…"

Kenny's gaze swung back toward him. "Yes?"

"Speaking of Kyle," Stan said in a rush, hearing the desperation in his own voice, "do you think he's acting kind of funny? Like, avoiding me? 'Cause he seems like he's—"

Kenny groaned. "_Oh my god_," he said, rubbing at his face. "_No, _dude. No fucking way. I am not in the mood to deal with your and Kyle's gay bullshit tonight, all right?"

Stan had jerked a little at the word 'gay.' "What?" he said, trying not to sound offended. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I've been watching you guys pretending not to look at each other since I got here and it's like the most pathetic thing I've ever seen," Kenny said, lighting a cigarette. "Just go over there and fucking talk to him if it's bothering you so much. I mean, Jesus Christ. You don't have this many relationship problems with your fucking girlfriend."

There was definitely something about Kenny tonight that differed from his usual casual demeanor, and Stan wondered what he and Wendy had actually said to each other. Kenny's bizarre irritation, the way he seemed ready to snap at the slightest provocation, reminded him more than a little of Wendy's behavior not an hour earlier.

It was hard to focus on much of anything else, however, when he could see Kyle still sitting on that picnic bench and nursing a can of beer by himself. Bebe had told him to do the same thing, but now that he was thinking about it… "You really think I should just ask him?"

"Dude, yes," Kenny said, rolling his eyes. "Seriously, it's _Kyle_. You guys will be super-best-faggot-friends until the end of time. Don't tell me you think he's actually mad at you."

"Well, no," Stan said numbly, wondering what Kenny would think if he knew how close he and Kyle had actually gotten. "But… um… Kenny…"

Kenny raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"… Nothing," Stan said, rubbing his arms to collect himself. He had actually, he thought bewilderedly, been about to tell Kenny about the habit he'd gotten into of kissing Kyle when he felt like it. Maybe the beer he'd had was affecting him more than he'd realized. "I'm gonna go over there."

"Good," Kenny said, ashing his cigarette. "I'm gonna bounce."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Not really in the mood to party." He paused, and then said, a little awkwardly, "Sorry for talking shit about your girlfriend."

Stan chuckled. "Sorry I told my girlfriend that you're selling yourself for money."

Kenny finally grinned. "So we're even," he said before turning and sauntering away into the darkness.

* * *

"Kyle," a voice said.

Kyle looked up. Stan was standing in front of him, rubbing the back of his head, trying to look as if he weren't as nervous as Kyle felt. "Oh," he said. "Hey, dude."

Stan looked for a moment like he was going to say something else, but then he sighed and sat next to Kyle on the picnic table. Kyle edged away so that there was a little more space between them. "What's up?" Stan asked.

"Mmm. Not much." Kyle shrugged one shoulder. "Trying to enjoy this party, I guess. Which, frankly, is pretty shitty."

"Right?" Stan laughed. "Kevin's barely even getting any reception on his radio."

"Oh, dude, I know. It's like, 'hot new single, crackle crackle, some Mexican dude, crackle crackle crackle.'"

"And did you see that sophomore get tossed into Stark's Pond? Poor kid's gonna end up in the hospital with pneumonia."

"They only did it because we did it first. _That _was a good party."

"Yeah, that was a good party." They were quiet for a moment, Kyle taking another sip of beer, before Stan spoke again. "So what's really up?"

"Nothing," Kyle said, a little guiltily, as if he hadn't meant for Stan to notice he was avoiding him. Which was stupid, because—Stan's anger flared up a little—of _course _he would notice.

"It's not 'nothing,'" he said. "You've been ignoring me since the game let out. What gives?"

"I wasn't ignoring you," Kyle said, sounding even guiltier.

"Like hell you weren't. This is the first real conversation we've had all night. Are you mad at me or something? Did I do something to piss you off?"

"Of course not," Kyle said, and his tone was convincing enough. "Look, dude, don't worry about me; I'm okay right here, so go have fun. This is your night, y'know?"

"I thought we agreed it was a shitty party," Stan said, his anger still rising. "And how the hell am I supposed to have fun without you?"

Kyle looked at him, mingling pleasure and disbelief with just the tiniest bit of despair, but it was then that Craig's premonition came true: Officer Barbrady pulled into the overgrown Stark's Pond parking lot with what looked like the entire South Park police force, lights flashing and voices roaring over the cars' intercoms. Kids ran in every direction, alternately terrified and screaming with laughter, while officers piled out of the squad cars brandishing truncheons. Barbrady himself had a megaphone in one hand and his gun in the other, and was waving the latter around while he yelled at the kids to line up in an orderly fashion. Cartman could be heard screaming "_Piiiiiiiiiigs! I smell bacon! I smell bacon!_" with Clyde's raucous laughter undulating in the background.

"Shit," Kyle said, apparently stunned. Stan grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him off of the table, and together they sprinted toward the line of trees.

* * *

The woods were strangely quiet. Impossibly, there was no one else around; the police hadn't followed them, and neither had any of the other kids. The first snow had yet to fall, so it seemed darker than usual under the cover of the trees, the plants on the forest floor whispering under their feet and the branches that spiderwebbed over their heads blocking most of whatever light would otherwise have penetrated the gloom.

Stan still had Kyle by the wrist. Kyle was tugging at his arm, making half-hearted attempts to free himself, but Stan was too pissed to notice, his thoughts spinning angrily and colliding in his head, so finally Kyle gave an almighty wrench and said, "_Dude! _Let _go _of me!"

Stan stopped abruptly, whirling around in surprise; Kyle was standing with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at him. He looked different somehow, older, less like the kid he'd known his whole life than he'd ever looked before—and Stan noticed for the first time that Kyle wasn't wearing his goofy green hat. His face, shadowed by his hood in the dim moonlight, the way his bangs fell into his eyes, his mouth, set into a hard line near the point of his delicate chin… they belonged to a person Kyle had turned into when he wasn't paying attention, and he shrunk into himself now with the irrational fear that he was alone with someone that he didn't know at all.

"… I'm sorry," he said finally.

Kyle groaned and rubbed his face, and the gesture was so familiar that Stan felt a rush of warmth at the recognition. "No—no, it's… whatever," he said, closing the last couple of feet they had between them. "You have to stop apologizing to me when I treat you like shit."

Stan smiled self-consciously. "Maybe I am a piece of shit."

"Stan, you are like the furthest thing from a piece of shit." Kyle paused, rubbing his eyes. He looked exhausted, and slightly intoxicated, from close up. "I didn't mean to ignore you like that," he said. "That was… really immature of me."

"But what did I do?" Stan said, unwilling just to let it drop.

"Nothing," Kyle said forcefully. "You didn't do anything; it's just _me, _I… I just… sometimes I wonder why we're friends," he said, and when Stan took a step back, his eyes wide, he gave a sigh and shook his head in frustration. "Ugh, wait, that came out wrong. It's just that… I mean, you're great. You know that, right? You're, like, confident and handsome and great at everything, and I'm just… some kid. It freaks me out sometimes, you know? Like, why am _I _your best friend, of all people?"

"Because we've always been best friends," Stan said.

Kyle looked at him wearily. "Is that enough, though?" he said. "I keep feeling like… like I'm too dependent on you. And the minute you figure that out, you're gonna get sick of me."

Stan watched his friend squirm and pull at his hair for a couple seconds, feeling curiously as if Kyle had just punched him in the bruise on his stomach. "Kyle," he said finally, "you're the smartest guy I know, but that is the most retarded thing I've ever heard you say."

Kyle frowned. "Dude, I've said dumber things than that."

"Whatever, okay? First of all, you are _not _just 'some kid.' Second, I _want _you to depend on me. We're best friends; that's what we're supposed to do. And _third_, I could never, _ever _get sick of you."

"You got sick of everything else," Kyle said. "Even Wendy—"

"And I went to you, didn't I? That was—that was _routines_, okay? You're not a routine, you're—I can't believe we're even having this conversation."

"I'm not?" Kyle said, and although his shoulders were still hunched self-consciously his voice had gone sort of hushed and unfocused, like he was hanging on every word Stan said.

"Of course you're not."

Kyle looked away, his eyelashes fluttering as he began to chew on his lower lip, and Stan had to remind himself that they were outside, in the open; that there were probably twenty other kids in these woods. "So what am I?" Kyle said after a few quiet, pregnant moments.

"You're… I dunno, you're Kyle." Stan paused, licking his lips. He felt light-headed. The trees were beginning to spin. "You're my best friend, and… so you know, I would rather hang out with you than, like, _any _of the people at that party. I can talk to you about whatever stupid bullshit is bothering me and you always listen. I feel like you know me for who I am, not just the stuff I do…." He trailed off, unable to articulate exactly what Kyle meant to him. It wasn't something he could put into words. "I… I don't really know what I'd do without you, dude—"

. Kyle shoved him against a tree and kissed him, hard.

The tree's surface was rough and there was a knob twisting painfully into his back, but these petty sensations took a back seat to the thought that Kyle, in kissing as in most other things, was a very quick study. His hands, which had grasped the front of Stan's jacket, traveled up over his shoulders and wound in Stan's hair, forcing their mouths together with a franticness that sent Stan's blood slamming through his veins. He pulled Kyle flush against him, making Kyle gasp sharply into his mouth, and ran his hands over his shoulders, his back, the arch of his spine; feeling the shape of his body through the folds of his hoodie. He didn't feel like a girl, Stan thought dimly, his thought process hindered by the pressure of Kyle's tongue and the sting of his fingernails on his neck; he had broader shoulders, a slim waist, subtle muscle mass where Wendy just had softness. It wasn't off-putting, however, just _different_; it excited him because this was Kyle who was pressed up against him, pulling away slightly to draw breath, his eyelashes brushing against Stan's cheek. Stan kissed him again, savoring the taste of his mouth: beer, a cigarette he must have had, and something else, something that was uniquely Kyle. Kyle's hands slipped inside his jacket, clutching at the thin material of his T-shirt, and Stan gripped Kyle's jaw, deepening the kiss; his hood fell away from his face and Stan ran his hands through his friend's shaggy hair, feeling him shudder a little at the unexpected contact.

Then a twig snapped somewhere nearby and Kyle leaped backward, stumbling a little over his own feet in his haste. Stan blinked dumbly at the sudden change in atmosphere, and they both listened intently for the sound of footsteps or a human voice.

"Um," Kyle said after a moment, when it appeared they were still alone. "Sorry." And then: "I've been wanting to do that all night."

Stan wavered on his feet, watching Kyle pull his hood back over his reddening face, and he felt like he should say something witty and cool, something that would impress him. But he couldn't think of anything that wasn't either stupid or that Kyle would make fun of him for saying anyway, so he tried to flatten his hair, feeling his chest and stomach burn where Kyle's fingers had been a moment before, and said, "Oh."

"I bet it's getting late," Kyle said. "You think we should…?"

"Yeah," Stan said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. The beer was definitely affecting him more than he'd thought it had. Definitely. It had to be. "Let's go."

They set off under the trees, Kyle with his head down and his hands shoved in his pockets, an intentional distance between them that they both felt the weight of.

* * *

The walk home wasn't awkward, exactly, even if they were both quieter than they might have been otherwise. Stan, in particular, was preoccupied by his own thoughts, reflecting on the rollercoaster of emotion that the last hour had been and wondering, a little warily, what it was about his and Kyle's friendship that had been more tumultuous as of late, when Kyle stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

Stan looked back at him, confused. "What's up?"

The ends of Kyle's lips curved up a little. "This is my house."

"Oh. Yeah." When Kyle turned to go up the walk Stan followed him. He'd rarely been on the Broflovski's street so late at night. It was dark, quiet, almost peaceful; there wasn't a single light on in any of the houses. Kyle paused on the porch, leaning against the banister, and Stan leaned against the opposite banister and looked at him. He needed to say _something_—something important, something that would dispel the awful agitation in his chest, but he felt dizzy and empty-headed, and the only words that occurred to him were mundane and ineffectual. He didn't feel so "great" at the moment.

Kyle was watching him, absentmindedly twirling one of his curls around his finger. "Want to hang out tomorrow?" he said. "I've got this new game, so… uh…"

"Okay," Stan said. His voice sounded too loud in the maddening quiet.

"Yeah, so, um, I'll come over—"

"In the afternoon sometime. Sure."

Kyle reached out and brushed his fingers against Stan's stomach, as if he wasn't sure he should touch him at all. Stan had received so much attention over the last couple of hours for his injury that the very thought of sympathy, toward the end of the party, had begun to turn his stomach, but the concern that Kyle couldn't quite extinguish from his wary eyes, the dip between his eyebrows, the way his lips trembled like he wanted to say something but couldn't—they hit him in such a way that impressed that Kyle was his _best _friend, the one person who would believe in him and care about him even when he wasn't winning football games and being what everyone else wanted him to. Finally, his voice low and gravelly with repressed emotion, Kyle said, "You're okay, aren't you?"

Stan nodded slowly. He tried to swallow, but his throat felt curiously tight. "Yeah."

"… Okay. Um, good. I'm gonna…" Kyle gestured at his front door. "I'm gonna go inside."

Stan was still nodding. "Sure," he said.

He thought for a moment—a split second—that Kyle was going to invite him in. Regardless of the fact that he'd practically grown up in the Broflovski's house, and that he'd been there more times than he could possibly count, the idea shot him through with an excitement bordering on agitation. It was like he was in middle school again and Wendy had invited him over to watch movies on the couch in the den while her parents kept dutifully to their bedroom—just like that. But then Kyle shrugged, and smiled, and said "See you tomorrow" in a voice that was barely audible despite the silence of the night around them.

"Yeah," Stan said. And then: "Kyle…"

Kyle raised his eyebrows, a silent question in his eyes. Stan hesitated, then said, "You really are my best friend in the whole world."

The corners of Kyle's lips turned up again. "I know."

He turned to go, but the agitation was traveling up Stan's throat into his mouth, and he said, again, "Kyle—"

Even though they were out in the open, and even though a light had gone on in Mr. and Mrs. Broflovski's window upstairs, Stan grabbed his friend by the wrist and kissed him softly, once. When they separated Kyle looked uncertain, but before he could say a word Stan mumbled "tomorrow" and leaped off of the porch, sprinting down the street toward his house with a ringing in his ears and a buzz in his chest that he couldn't have dissipated even if he'd wanted to try.

* * *

So I didn't entirely intend to turn Kyle into a mess of self-conscious neuroses, but it works for this story, so hey, y'know. It's not like I'm incapable of writing characters that aren't introverted and debilitatingly self-doubting or anything. (It totally is.)

Here's the deal on this story: it is nowhere near finished. In fact, I would venture to say this I still consider this the beginning. And I am _determined _to finish it, mostly just to see if I can. This is draft #2, currently, and although I am having trouble with part four _it is coming_. Hopefully soon. I would still love your feedback and encouragements and screaming hissy fits in the form of reviews, of course (that button down there? _Click it. Do it now. Say words. That is all_).

Oh, and see that 'M' rating up there? That kicks in next chapter. See you guys then.


	4. Chapter 4

WOOOO HOW ABOUT THAT HIATUS. … Seriously I am very sorry and it won't happen again.

The name of the game this chapter is sexual tension. "But Enkay," you might say, "I thought we'd already been down that road." To which _I _say, "Oh-ho, gentle reader. O-_ho_."

Good Lives

Part Four

"_I've got nowhere to go  
__I've got nowhere to go  
__So don't move so slow_

_I can't take it"  
_~ "I Can't Take It," Tegan and Sara

When Kyle showed up at Stan's house the next day with his Gamesphere and two bottles of sugar-free soda stuffed into his backpack, there was nothing on his face to indicate that he was dwelling on their intimate parting last night—which meant that that special pleasure, and the apprehension and embarrassment that went along with it, was all Stan's. As he shut the door behind his best friend, in fact, hovering anxiously behind him as he slipped off his shoes and hung up his autumn jacket, he noticed that Kyle was grinning: a rare sort of grin that only appeared when something really good had happened (or, alternately, on the rare occasion that Cartman had got what he deserved).

"What?" he said when Kyle looked his way.

"What do you mean, 'what'?" Kyle asked, dropping his backpack on the ground and collapsing into the Marsh's couch.

"You just look really happy about something," Stan said, and instead of sitting on the couch next to Kyle he paused in front of him and swayed back and forth with his hands in his pockets, probably looking as awkward as he felt.

Kyle shrugged and averted his eyes, the corners of his mouth still stretched from ear to ear. "Nothing much," he said. "Except…I'm not supposed to be here."

Stan frowned. "I thought you were only grounded until the game yesterday."

"Well, I was," Kyle said.

"So?"

"So now I've got another month."

"What—?" Stan's shoulders tensed unconsciously, and he wondered for a moment whether Kyle's parents had seen him deliver that last, impromptu kiss. "Why?"

Kyle's grin flattened into a smirk, which he delivered upward with an impishness that threatened to turn Stan's already tempestuous stomach. "For coming home after midnight, reeking of beer."

Stan crossed his arms over his chest. "Oh."

"I mean, it's not like it really matters," Kyle said, pulling the Gamesphere out of his backpack and beginning to reattach the cords to the body of the machine as it rested in his lap. "They don't distrust me enough to watch the doors—and if they start doing that, I've got a window. I mean… it's stupid. I'm seventeen years old, they can't just keep me locked up. Right?"

"Sure," Stan said. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been grounded. When he was ten, maybe.

"I already told you I was coming over, and it's stupid to bail just because of their dumbass rules," Kyle was saying, lifting the bottles of soda out of his bag and kicking its empty husk to the side. "I'm not gonna spend my entire senior year shut up inside my house." Kyle's big green eyes were on Stan again. "Right, Stan?"

"Uh-huh," Stan said, and he took the soda into the kitchen to stick it in the fridge.

He was happy that Kyle was happy, although he didn't really understand what about getting grounded for petty offenses put him in such a great mood. But there was something about Kyle's sudden disregard for his parents' rules that made him a little nervous.

It was just… un-Kylelike. That was all.

When he came back into the living room, Kyle was hooking his video game system up to the TV. "Are you okay?" he asked, pausing long enough in his ministrations to look over his shoulder.

"Yep," Stan said. "Great. Why?"

"I dunno, you seem kind of out of it." Kyle stood up and tugged on the flaps of his ushanka (which, Stan had noticed as soon as he walked in, was pulled firmly over his red curls). "You sure everything's okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Stan said, plopping down onto the couch now that Kyle was no longer there. "Just… homecoming dance tonight. You know."

Kyle cocked his head. "You don't want to go?"

Stan's eyebrows raised in alarm. "No, I'm going. Who said I didn't want to go?"

"No one," Kyle said, a little awkwardly. If he'd been a little a closer Stan would have touched him, maybe; grabbed his hand and pulled him closer to diffuse the tension. So much as looking at Kyle's hands, however, hanging limply at his sides with his long, pale fingers and nails bitten to the quick, made his own fingers twitch with nervousness. There was half a room between them.

"Well, I mean," Kyle said, trying to sound as confident as he had a few short minutes ago, "of course you'd want to go. You and Wendy are up for king and queen, aren't you?"

Stan looked at him blankly for a moment before he threw his head back against the couch and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. "… Shit. Yeah, I guess we are."

"You didn't know?"

"No, I knew, I just… I guess I haven't really been thinking about it." He lowered his hands and looked plaintively at Kyle, and in another moment Kyle was sitting next to him on the couch, pulling his knees to his chest and crossing his legs at the ankle. "I've been… busy."

"I know you have."

"Dude, this is just… it's surreal." Stan shook his head slowly. "I mean, homecoming king? How do I even _do _that?"

"It's not like you need to do anything to be homecoming king." When Stan looked at him questioningly, Kyle shrugged. "You don't have any duties or anything. It's just a popularity contest. It means people like you."

"Yeah, but…" Stan stared down at his hands, big and calloused from weeks of football practice. "You tell someone you were homecoming king and they assume all this stuff about you—like, that you're this certain kind of person. Popular and confident and… is that what I am? The guy who gets picked to be homecoming king?"

"I dunno, are you?"

"I guess I must be."

Kyle leaned against him. It was a simple, compassionate gesture, something he could have done easily a couple of months ago without either of them giving it second thought, but now, even through their layers of clothes, it had a physicality to it that Stan couldn't ignore. "I think you're thinking about this too much."

"I know I am if you're saying it," Stan muttered in response, and even as Kyle laughed softly and punched him on the arm Stan thought about taking Kyle's chin in his hand and kissing him on the mouth. But his parents were upstairs—he could hear his dad's heavy footsteps on the floor above their heads—and Shelley was probably in the basement, where she'd moved after she graduated community college and started having to pay rent. It was just too ordinary a setting—a sunny, mid-autumn Saturday afternoon—for him to really believe it was possible to kiss his best friend just because he felt like it. So even though Kyle was looking at him expectantly, Stan leaned away from him and crossed his arms over his chest. "What are you doing tonight, anyway?"

"I dunno," Kyle said after a moment. "I guess I'll just go home and hang out with Ike. Assuming there's nothing good on TV." He laughed. "I sound really lame, don't I?"

"You don't just _sound _lame." Kyle rolled his eyes and punched Stan in the arm again, harder this time, as Stan swatted at the back of his head and let his hand drop to rest on the back of Kyle's neck, his arm dangling awkwardly between them. His heart was beginning to pound, so much so that he was sure Kyle could feel his pulse through the tender flesh on the inside of his wrist, but when Kyle looked his way he bent down abruptly, grabbing one of the controllers that had been idling on his living room floor and selecting his character for the first round.

"You'll have fun tonight," Kyle said eventually, leaning over and doing the same.

"Yeah," Stan said. "Sure I will."

Two hours later he was sprawled in the same spot next to the great mass of Eric Cartman, clutching one of his mom's throw pillows to his chest and trying to ignore the fact that the leg he had thrown over the side of the couch kept brushing against Kyle's arm. The game was pretty good, for a racing game—Kyle had always had decent taste in games—but his heart just wasn't in it. Kyle and Cartman, who were both much more competitive than he was, had taken to facing off in round after round as Stan gripped the pillow and watched the digital clock on the DVD player.

It was about 4:30 now, which meant he had an hour and a half left with his friends before he had to kick them out and start getting dressed for the dance. He'd noticed a blue dress shirt and a black tie and pants draped over the chair at his desk that morning—his mom's doing, clearly, since he'd barely thought about homecoming since he'd asked Wendy to go with him last week—and although he knew he should had been excited to spend the evening hanging out and dancing with his girlfriend, he couldn't help but dwell on the conversation he'd had with Kyle before Cartman had arrived. The more he thought about it, both the dance and the title—what was up with that, anyway, calling high school kids royalty because they happened to be popular?—began to seem like so much unnecessary spectacle. And Stan found himself wondering, more than once, why it would be such an awful thing for him to skip out on the dance entirely and fuck around all night with his friends.

"Kyle, you dirty Jew, you're cheating, you're cheating, you _have _to be fucking cheating—"

"Shut up, Cartman, I'm trying to concentrate."

"I'll murder you, Kyle, I swear to God; I'll lead you to the gas chamber myself—"

"That's not fucking funny, fat boy, and you _know _I'm going to beat your ass at this game—"

"Kyle—_Kyle_—I mean it—I'm warning you, Kyle—"

"Goddammit, Cartman, stop fucking pinching me! What are you, five?"

It was stupid that he felt so conflicted about going to this homecoming—his last South Park High homecoming, of which he was apparently supposed to be a crucial part—when the last three had been so effortless. He'd bought a corsage, and danced around the makeshift dance floor in the cafeteria with Wendy, and suffered through the awkward meal at Benny's afterwards with her and Bebe and whoever Bebe was dating at the time because he'd _had _to—it hadn't even occurred to him that there was anything else he could have done, because this was just what you did. But now that he was a senior, and it already felt, in a way, as if everything was coming to an end… why did he have to do it? Why did he _have _to do anything?

Kyle had never gone to homecoming. Kyle had always seemed totally comfortable doing whatever was true to him, without caring how it might make him look. And Cartman—whatever else could be said about him—was exactly the same way.

Stan rolled over and looked at his overweight friend, whose tongue was sticking out of the side of his mouth in concentration. "Dude, Cartman, you aren't going to the dance, are you?"

"Nope," Kyle said before Cartman could respond. "He couldn't find a date this year."

"Hey, screw you, Kyle," Cartman said poisonously, kicking Kyle in the small of his back with a bit more strength than was necessary. "I'm not the one who hasn't been to a dance since middle school."

"Because they're retarded and I hate dancing," Kyle retorted, shoving Cartman back with just as much animosity. He'd had two left feet since they were kids—perhaps not because Jews had no rhythm, as Cartman had always insisted, but because he was too conscious of both his own movements and those of the people around him to really enjoy or understand the point of something like dancing.

"Or because a girl hasn't so much as looked at your scrawny ass since Bebe Stevens dumped it in the seventh grade," Cartman said, to which Kyle breathed out harshly through his nose, like he was tired of hearing it. "'Sides, I am too going to the dance tonight. Butters is gonna help me spike the punch."

"Aw, at least you got Butters to be your date," Kyle said, his voice shaking with repressed laughter even as he twisted to get away from Cartman's manic foot. "That's—that's so sweet—"

"_Eat a dick, Kyle_—"

"You guys," Stan said wearily. Cartman snorted and Kyle sighed, and they all slipped into a relative silence as the former two came to a climax in their game; Kyle won, just barely, and as he cracked up with the sheer joy of victory and chugged the sugar-free soda straight from the bottle Cartman snarled out a string of filthy epithets and thrust his controller into the cushy armchair at his left, which was sitting empty.

"Why're you even asking?" he asked, and it took Stan a moment to realize that Cartman was talking to him.

"I dunno," he said. "Curious. I guess. Whatever." Kyle leaned against his leg and grasped his ankle, apparently in support, but Stan was so surprised by the sudden contact that he almost yanked the leg up onto the couch with the rest of him.

"Sure. Sure, okay." Cartman was quiet for a moment. "Because you usually give a shit what I do."

It was downright benign, for a Cartman barb, but for some reason it hurt. Stan frowned at him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Just what I said." When Stan kept frowning at him, Cartman's jaw twisted, and he said, "Look, am I supposed to think that you're going to hang out with me and Butters at the dance or whatever?"

"I—"

"Because we all know that you and Wendy are going to go off and do whatever the fuck it is you do when you're being everyone's favorite couple, and if you happen to see me it'll be like, 'oh _hey_ Cartman, how are _you_,' like you barely know me or something."

"Cartman," Kyle said quietly, in a warning tone, but Cartman interrupted him. "You know what, Kyle, shut up. You're going to take Stan's side no matter what I say, so just shut up. I don't need to hear it."

He crossed his beefy arms over his chest and stared unblinkingly at the TV screen, ignoring the awkward silence that he'd created between the three of them—and it might have stretched on indefinitely had someone not slammed the front door open and sauntered into the room.

It was Kenny.

"Don't get up on my account," he said when none of them made any response to his entrance but to stare at him. "I only come bringing gifts. Oh, and tidings of great joy."

"Gifts?" Cartman said, while Stan, stumbling over his words in his haste to speak, said, "Kenny! How are you—what—how's it going, dude?"

"I'm great, Stan," Kenny said, kneeling down next to Kyle. "Fucking peachy." And he did look like he was in a good mood, grinning up at them from under his tousled bangs; he was happier than he'd been last night, at the very least, and it seemed that any ill will that he'd had toward Stan—or Wendy—had all but disappeared.

"You said you had gifts?" Cartman said impatiently, bringing their attention back around to what was important.

"Right you are, fat boy." Ignoring Cartman's grumbled protests at the nickname, Kenny dug his hands into the depths of his hoodie and brought out four laminated cards, which he gave to each of them in turn. "I started thinking about it after I went home last night. I'm not going to let some asshole cheat me out of booze again, so I figured I'd spend a little of my savings—and it would suck to be boozin' it up alone, so I thought…"

"Savings of what? Monopoly money?" Cartman asked, but Kyle, who had been inspecting the card with a frown, made an alarmed noise and looked up at Kenny again, his eyes nearly popping out of his head. "Kenny—are these—" He shook his head. "Are these_ fake IDs_?"

"Yep," Kenny said.

Cartman gave a delighted shout of laughter and wrapped a beefy arm around Kenny's neck while Stan peered at his new ID. It was his school picture from last year, his name, except it claimed he had been born in May of 1989 and was a resident of the state of Missouri. He glanced down at Kyle, who was still staring at his likeness with a kind of wonder. He wasn't voicing his concerns or insisting that Kenny shouldn't have had them made, the way he might have before he'd started wanting to break all the rules, but he was still flushed and seemed more than a little overwhelmed by the illegal document he had in his hand.

Stan brought his new ID up to his lips to hide his smile. Kyle hadn't changed _too _much.

"We won't be able to use them much in South Park or anything," Kenny was saying as he struggled not to asphyxiate in the crook of Cartman's elbow. "Except at convenience stores and gas stations; they don't give a shit in there. There isn't gonna be a bartender in town who won't know that we're all underage. But who wants to hang out in South Park anyway? Denver—Boulder—even fucking Middle Park—" He jammed the heel of his hand into Cartman's fleshy cheek, stopping him from administering what would have been an egregious noogie. "Jesus, Cartman, lay off."

"Kenny, seriously, I love you, man. This is the best thing you've ever done for me, ever."

Kenny snorted and caught Stan's eye. Stan grinned, a funny sideways grin, and said, "Do we owe you anything?"

"Nah," Kenny said. "Nothing. Consider it a gift." The first substantial gift, probably, that he'd ever been able to give. His gaze travelled back to Cartman, then to Stan again, and then finally to Kyle, who was sitting bolt upright with his ID held away from his lap, as if he was unwilling to become too comfortable with it. "So how about it?"

"How about what?" Stan said.

Kenny grinned. "The Raging Pussies are playing at a bar tonight in North Park. Free with cover."

"Really?" Kyle exclaimed.

"_Kenny_," Cartman said. "_Seriously. You are the best person I have ever, ever_—"

Stan's eyes fluttered closed, and he pinched the bridge of his nose with clammy fingers. "I have to go to the dance," he said.  
"Aw, fuck that, dude," Kenny said. "Skip."

He said it so easily. Stan looked down at his sloping shoulders and rough, dirty hands, his crooked grin, and felt an unfamiliar twinge of jealousy arrest his features. But then he gathered himself, and sighed, and said, "No, I really have to—Wendy would kill me if I didn't, so…"

Kenny shrugged. "Suit yourself," he said, and flung an arm around Kyle's shoulders. "I'll just take Kyle."

"_What_," Cartman said.

Stan imagined Kyle's smirk was the slightest bit uncomfortable as he dislodged Kenny's fingers from his shoulder. "You're not 'taking' me anywhere. Unless, of course, you plan on paying for all of my drinks."

"Pffff. Like hell, Broflovski. I'm not _that _generous."

"What the fuck, Kenny?" Cartman demanded. "Why am I suddenly not invited?"

"Oh, yeah, like I'm gonna run interference between you and Kyle all night. I'll leave that to Stan."

"Then just go with me! Fuck Kyle!"

"Yeah, that'll happen."

"I don't see how the fuck you're going to get to Middle Park without begging me for a ride—"

"—Unless I steal the keys to my dad's pickup like, I don't know, an hour ago. Way ahead of you, fatass."

"It's okay, Kenny. Cartman has a date with Butters anyway."

"With _Butters_, you say?"

"Suck a _fuck_, Kyle—"

As they were arguing, Stan slipped between Cartman and Kenny and, unnoticed by his friends, drifted upstairs; he wandered down the hallway to his room, unsure of anything but the fact that he couldn't handle being there any longer, but when he'd shut his door behind him and sat down at his desk, where his clothes for that evening were still draped over his chair, he got out his phone and dialed her number, as purposefully as he would had he intended on doing it all along.

Wendy picked up on the third ring. "Stan!" she exclaimed—her mood, like Kenny's, much improved from last night. "Hi—I'm just—Red is just finishing up my hair, so—" She covered the mouthpiece and said something to someone on her end, probably Red, just as Stan felt his heart drop into his gut. "What's up?"

"I, um—I dunno," Stan said. "Nothing really, but I guess I was just… wondering how you were getting along—"

"Great!" Wendy said. "I'm great, I can't stop looking at my dress; it's _gorgeous—_not too ostentatious, I think, but it's got this sparkly fabric stuff in it that's really—and oh my God, you don't want to hear about my dress—sorry—but… I'm pretty excited, I guess! Annie wouldn't shut about the nomination, so now that I'm thinking about it… we could win tonight, you know?"

"I know," Stan said.

"And…" Her voice dropped a little. "And Stan, I just want to do something _normal_. You know?" There was a shuffling down the line, as if she was pacing around Red's bedroom, or wherever she was. "I… I don't know about you, but for me, but the last month has been kind of long and stressful; there's been all this weirdness, and… I just really need this tonight." She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was even softer. "What about you?"

"Yeah," Stan said. His throat had gone dry with shame, and he coughed a little. "Yeah," he said again. "I'm looking forward to tonight, too."

Wendy laughed. He'd always liked her giggles: they were soft and private, somehow, as if she reserved them expressly for him. "Great," she said. "Great. I'll see you in a few hours."

"Pick you up at six-thirty," Stan said, and then he hung up.

* * *

Her words had come to him when he was lying in bed at night, adjusting the volume knob on his radio so that he couldn't hear the sound of his parents shouting over the static. They'd come to him when he was sitting on the bench outside the sports bar in town, flicking his lighter idly and waiting for the right man to step outside and flash a wad of bills at him when he was ostensibly reaching for a cigarette. But when Wendy Testaburger sat next to him on the stoop under the back stairs at school, where he usually hid out when he was cutting class, he was so shocked that he got up and left without saying a word.

"Kenny," she said to his back, but he managed to lose her in the crowd, thinking to himself that he might as well go to his Spanish class after all.

The next day she cornered him at his locker between classes, and the day after that she appeared next to him as he leaned against the bike rack after school and smoked; she never said anything after that first time, looking up at him from under her dark eyelashes and tucking her hair behind her ear, but still he bolted before she could open her mouth, infused with a nervousness that made his hands shake as he smoked cigarette after cigarette after cigarette.

He'd heard people say Wendy was scary before, and wondered at it: how this pale, delicate-looking girl, whom he'd always known better as Stan's girlfriend than any characteristic unto herself, could strike anyone as something other than ordinary. He'd never disliked her. She was pretty—not his type, but attractive enough—and despite her thin wrists and small hands, whose bones looked like they would snap under the slightest blow, she'd always had a passion to her over-the-top liberal diatribes that had put his estimation of her closer to his estimation of Stan and Kyle than the rest of this stupid town.

But then—as he'd come to realize over the last couple of days—she'd never really looked at him before. There was an intensity to her gaze that was somehow disquieting, and when it was fixated on you, you couldn't help but shiver for the weight of it.

He was used to people looking past him. It wasn't a huge deal or anything: it was just the way things were. He'd wondered idly before, waiting at Stan's side for him to finish a conversation with an acquaintance or two, how it would feel to be that guy: the kind of person who couldn't walk down the hallway at school without running into someone who knew and liked him. The kind of person people sought out and wanted to befriend, rather than the guy no one really wanted to acknowledge. It would be… fun, maybe. Fulfilling, even if he didn't really know what that meant, either.

But that was an idle fantasy. This was a real person, a real girl with her own untold thoughts and agenda peering into him with her huge creepy violet-hued eyes, always searching, always questioning, and that—the thought of being observed and judged by someone who didn't look quickly away when he returned their gaze—was more discomforting even than the fact that he'd barely made a dime since she'd started following him around. It was the visceral reaction he felt every time he caught sight of her, not anything she might want to say to him, that really, truly freaked him out: the disarming, sickening feeling of cracks beginning to form in his worldview.

Kenny McCormick knew people, or thought he did—he knew, more than any of his sheltered, privileged classmates, how weak and ignorant and selfish his fellow man could really be. He'd endured. He'd observed. He'd seen his parents look at him from across the room like they were too drunk and tired to remember who he was. He'd felt his brother smack him just because he could, too hard to be entirely playful. But now that he had been so totally disarmed by the simplest of actions—meeting a person's eyes from across the room and forming the connection that comes of acknowledging someone and being acknowledged in return—he was beginning to suspect that he really didn't know anything at all.

* * *

The day before Halloween was cold and brazenly windy, an overcast Tuesday that reflected the souring post-homecoming attitudes of the student body. Wendy Testaburger stood on the crumbling stone steps at the entrance to their high school, her coat whipping around her legs as she held her loose hair out of her eyes, and even as she answered Heidi's queries about her plans for tomorrow and laughed at Red's barbed quips, she was craning her head around almost without thinking about it, raking her eyes over every windbreaker-clad body on the lawn in search of a slight boy in a faded black hoodie.

_I'm getting obsessed with this_, she thought, even as she declined Bebe's offer of a ride home in her convertible. It was turning into a compulsion, this argument—disagreement—unspoken _thing _she had with Kenny McCormick. Every day now she wondered if she should just stop—that all she was really doing was pissing him off, and that there was so much of her own life that she was letting pass her by (Stan, her friends, _school_) because she just couldn't let this go. But then she would catch a glimpse of him in a crowd, turned slightly away from everybody else with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his eyes covered by the sweep of his hood or his untidy dirty-blond hair, and before she knew it she would be moving toward him like a moth to a flame, pushing in-between people without thinking to apologize, and if he happened to see her, and glared, and vanished, she would stand stock-still and breathe out slowly through her nose, pushing down that averted feeling of _purpose _that came so naturally to her, and think _Next time. I'll get him next time_.

"And oh my God," Annie was saying, "I could swear he was looking at me today. You guys think he might like me? _I_ think he might like me—"

"Annie, sweetie," Bebe said, "I told you not to waste your time with Kevin Stoley."

"Kevin? I don't care about Kevin; I'm talking about Jason."

"_Jason_? That kid's been balding since like the first grade."

"Shut up, Heidi, I think he's cute—"

"Yeah, uh-huh. If you're into the Mr. Garrison look."

"_Wendy_," Annie said plaintively, drawing her abruptly into the conversation. "Do _you _think I'm crazy for thinking Jason is cute?"

"Uhmm," Wendy said, weighing her actual opinion with the possibility that Annie might actually take what she said to heart. "He's not my type, Annie, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be yours."

"See?" Annie said to Heidi, who snorted and rolled her eyes. "Wendy thinks it's fine!"

"Wendy's just too nice for her own good," Red said, throwing her arm around Wendy's shoulders and squeezing lightly with her fingertips. "Homecoming queeeen."

"Stop," Wendy said, fighting down a rising blush. "Like that actually means anything."

"So _ungrateful_," Bebe said, and she grinned to let Wendy know she was kidding. Wendy had wondered a couple of times whether the win would strain their relationship at all—but Bebe wasn't the type to dwell on the past. She had already dumped the boy that she'd gone to the dance with. "It's as if you don't even care that we all think you're the perfect couple."

"Stop," Wendy said again, a little more forcefully. "We're not perfect—we're _not_," she said, when her friends made noises of disbelief. "Stan and I have problems sometimes, we just—we don't really… talk about them."

"Really?" Red demanded. "Like at homecoming?"

"Did you fight?"

"_Tell us_!"

"Wh—no, we didn't fight," Wendy said, flustered by the sudden attentiveness of her friends' eyes. "He was… he was a little distant, but that was all."

"Uh-huh," Bebe said, although the hand with which she gripped Wendy's elbow was surprisingly supportive. "Well, I'm heading out; I'm sick of this place. You sure you don't want a ride, Wendy?"

Wendy said she was sure, and as her friends walked away, their chatter audible even after their words had faded away, she gave the yard another cursory glance, this time looking for her boyfriend as well as Kenny.

It had occurred to her once—only once—that she could ask Stan to help her. Kenny was one of his best friends, after all—his _best _friend, probably, after Kyle—and he already knew the situation. He did not know that she and Kenny had had that angry, heated, almost-violent meeting under the bleachers after the game, but that shouldn't have been anything she was unable to tell him.

But there was the fact that Stan had shut down her concerns immediately after she had voiced them, which made her wonder whether Stan might not disagree with what she was doing, were he to know. Kenny certainly hadn't said anything to him—and if he had, Stan was remaining firmly out of it.

This was between she and Kenny McCormick, anyway. Wendy did not need her boyfriend to fight her battles for her once the going got a little tough, and she was going to fight this one out to the end. It was not because she was hesitant to give Stan an excuse to be mad at her, or because she was wary of tipping the balance of what had been, as of late, a cautious, more distant relationship. This was just one crusade she couldn't expect Stan to understand. That was all.

She caught sight of him then, suddenly; he was leaning against the wall of the athletic wing near the football field, hunched over with his hands cupped around his shadowed face, trying to light a cigarette against the force of the wind. She set off at once, slipping in-between groups of dispersing kids as she made her way down the side of the building. She was about fifty feet away when he saw her; scowling, he pushed away from the wall and stomped off toward the bike racks, sucking furiously on the cigarette that he'd managed to light. Wendy changed her course and followed him. He zigzagged in-between people and kept his head down, pulling his hood more tightly over his head to hide his face, but she kept on him, following him easily thanks to the fact that he didn't have much of a crowd to lose her in. When he reached the gnarly old tree that stood opposite to the bike racks, he stopped; standing stock-still for a moment, he seemed to quiver on his feet, before he leaned purposefully against the tree and waited, his arms clutched tightly to his chest. As she drew nearer Wendy noted the ugliness in his eyes, the dark cast to his features, and felt chilled even through the rush of accomplishment that she'd felt at her victory.

"This doesn't mean I give a shit about what you have to say," he said when she stopped a few feet in front of him. "But I can't handle you following me anymore."

She hesitated, but only for a moment; she wanted to see, as she spoke, the way Kenny's face would contort with badly-suppressed anger. "So I was getting to you."

"Fuck 'getting to me'," he said—and there was that expression, the one that made her feel as if she had managed to spark this change in him. Like he was actually seeing her. "You're a psychopath, you know that? There has to be something actually wrong with you." His breath exploded out of his mouth in a terse cloud of smoke. "Why won't you just leave me alone?"

Wendy shrugged. "I guess because everyone else does."

"Bullshit," he said, but the way his jaw had tensed before he looked away was much more telling. "So, what," he said, his voice thick with malice, "you just do things because no one else does? That's stupid. Pretty fucking stupid way to live your life."

"I think it's admirable," Wendy said.

He snorted at her unabashed admission to her own ego. "Don't you think that some things don't happen because they _shouldn't_?"

"No," Wendy said, more forcefully than she'd intended to. "You're talking about fate. And I don't believe in fate. It's always possible to change something if you put the right amount of work into it."

"Whatever," Kenny said, clearly tired of this philosophical back-and-forth. "Look," he said through another exhalation of smoke, "if you've been following me around to give me shit about the way I make money, you can just fuck off. I'm not interested."

She stood up a little straighter. "Maybe that's not why I'm here."

"It is, though." She didn't say anything, so he lit a new cigarette off of the end of the one he'd just finished before tossing it onto the ground below their feet. "Why else would you _suddenly _be so interested in me?"

She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. "… Look, I didn't mean to… _stalk _you or anything. I'm just… I'm bad at letting things go."

"Yeah, no shit."

"I know I can be a little overbearing," she said over his retort. "And… maybe a little bit of a know-it-all. But I don't see why it's so hard for you to believe that someone would care what happens to you."

"Oh, you don't?"

"I already told you why I think it's dangerous," Wendy said quickly. "And obviously you don't believe me, or you don't care. But don't you have any self-respect? Doesn't it drive you crazy for people to use you like that?"

"Oh, Jesus Christ."

"I'm serious!"

"Yeah, I know you are. That's what makes this so fucking funny."

Wendy opened her mouth, then closed it again, her eyes darkening above her slowly reddening cheeks.

"See, I don't know if you knew this about me, Wendy," Kenny said, his stony expression twisting into a sardonic smirk that was, somehow, even worse, "but I am _poor as fuck_. My parents are poor as fuck. My _siblings _are poor as fuck. My whole fucking neighborhood probably has the net value of your cute little four-bedroom home. So I have no problem, none whatsoever, with making money any way I can. Smart as you're supposed to be, I thought you'd understand that."

"I do," Wendy said, even as he tossed his head and made an odd sound in the back of his throat, half snort, half sigh. "No, listen, I—I might not _empathize_, but I do understand that my parents could give me virtually anything I wanted while yours can barely manage to provide for you. I_ know_ I'm privileged, all right?" She scowled at his unchanging expression. "But… why _not_ get a job or something? There are plenty of places in South Park that could stand to hire part-time help, and—everyone already knows you—"

"Yeah," Kenny said derisively. "They sure do." When she didn't say anything, he sighed and rubbed his hair and said, "You really think anyone in this town would hire me? _Me_, with my drunk dad, and my shithead brother, and my mom, who's tried to steal something from every big chain store in town?"

"I—"

"They'd rip up my application the minute I left. If they didn't do it right in front of me and laugh me out of the store." His lip curled, and he retained that ugly expression as his gaze flickered back to meet hers. "Wouldn't you?"

"No," Wendy said. "I wouldn't."

The corners of Kenny's mouth turned up. It was like he was reading her mind—her privileged, middle-class pretensions to _understanding—_and laughing at her for it. "I think you'd probably feel differently if you'd ever had to earn your own money."

"You don't know that."

"And you weren't some high school girl who has to involve herself in everyone else's problems because she doesn't have any of her own."

Wendy breathed out sharply through her nostrils. "I would at least give you a chance."

"Yeah fucking right you would."

They stood there without speaking, Wendy with her jaw locked and her eyes fixated on the line of trees across from the football field to their left, and Kenny with his insides squirming with anger and shame and regret, half-sure that he'd mouthed off to his friend's girlfriend just a little _too _much and she was about to burst into tears. When she sighed, and gathered her hair over one shoulder, and said, "Kenny, I'm sorry," he cut her off by blurting out, "I wouldn't get a job here even if I could."

Her eyebrows raised just a fraction, and she looked at him. Her eyes were clear. Not a tear in sight. "No?"

"No, I…" He sighed, frustrated. She waited. "I'm not saying that I think I'm above the law, or I think I'm too good to have a real job or… whatever. But I don't want that, you know? To get a shitty job around here just to get by, and then just stay here after graduation. Because I'd already have an income, and it would be… easy."

Wendy watched his face in profile, his long eyelashes and angular jaw, and for several long moments she was unable to move; she felt paralyzed and stupid, her palms prickling with sweat and her guts swooping around in her torso with a unyielding tenacity, and it came to her all at once that she was reacting to him: he had this fierce magnetism to him, this beautiful, poignant honesty—and where it had come from, she couldn't say, except that it differed entirely from the image of an apathetic, nondescript boy slumping in his jeans and stained hoodie.

"You're amazing," she said.

He looked at her, alarmed, and she saw that he was blushing. Perhaps feeling the heat in his own face, he tugged his hood further over his dirty hair and scowled at her. "_Jesus_," he said. "Don't say shit like that to me."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not used to it."

"Sorry."

They stood there in silence as Kenny crushed his cigarette butt underfoot, and Wendy realized she hadn't said a single thing to him that she'd intended to. Bringing up Kenny's prostitution now, however, was not an option; she felt chastened somehow, as if the Kenny who had sworn at her under the bleachers and the boy standing next to her now could not possibly be one and the same.

"Where would you go?" she asked quietly. "If you could."

Kenny looked at her for a moment like he hadn't understood a word she'd said, and then he laughed. "No fuckin' idea," he said, and for once he wasn't making fun of her. Wendy watched him light another cigarette, humming a fragment of a Doors song as he shoved his pack and lighter back into his pockets, and wondered if this wasn't the first time she'd ever heard him laugh.

* * *

It occurred to Stan halfway through the afternoon of the 30th of October, when Kyle was on top of him on top of the couch in the Broflovski's living room with his tongue in his mouth and Stan's hand pushing the tail of his shirt up his back, that this wasn't enough anymore.

His jaw tensed at the realization. Kyle broke the kiss, lips still brushing lips as he pushed Stan's bangs back over his head and whispered, "What's wrong?"

"Nnn," Stan mumbled, so shocked and horny that he'd temporarily forgotten how to put a sentence together. "Nothing. Don't worry about it." And then he kissed Kyle again, so deeply and intensely that neither of them spent the next half hour thinking of anything else.

But later, when he was sitting at the island in the Broflovski's kitchen with his feet gathered onto the chair with the rest of him, picking absently at the drawstring to his jacket while Kyle made coffee and grumbled about his dad forgetting to take the clean dishes out of the dishwasher, he stared holes into the back of Kyle's head, and his shoulders, and the nape of his neck, where escaped tendrils of red hair curled over the shock of white skin between his hat and the collar of his shirt, and wondered at how the feeling wasn't going away.

He'd never really given much thought to how Kyle looked before. They'd known each other for so long that it was a bit of a moot point: Kyle just looked like Kyle. And he knew Kyle was self-conscious about being kind of skinny, and about his red hair, and… most things, really, even if he never really brought it up. But looking at him now, as well as over the last several days and weeks, he couldn't help but think that he looked… _good_. His freckled nose, his big eyes, his mouth, the way one side of his face would kind of scrunch up when he smiled; his hands, his arms, the self-conscious way he held himself, the way he cocked his head when he was really listening to someone… they were all things he knew, but things he'd never really… noticed. Not until recently.

He didn't know whether the change was in him or in Kyle—and he could have made a decent case for either—but definitely, undeniably, something was different. He'd only ever kissed Kyle at all—the second time, not the first time, which had been desperate and inevitable in a way that it made him uncomfortable to think back on—because it had seemed so harmless. They'd already done it without their world imploding, without Kyle hating him. And he'd wanted to.

Now, looking at Kyle, he was remembering the way his friend would steel himself, half-wary and half-expectant, when he realized Stan was about to kiss him. The prickle of his dry lips, the texture of his hair when their faces gravitated together. The heaviness of his breathing, the tension in his thighs, when Stan would pull him on top of him and Kyle would ball his fists in the back of Stan's shirt because they needed to be closer, close, close, and Stan had felt something hot and bewilderingly hard pressing into the side of his gut even as he'd been appreciating the shape of Kyle's mouth, the delicate arch to his back.

Stan closed his fingers on a fistful of hair and tightened them until it hurt. He could feel his face flushing, even though he wasn't willing to drag his eyes away from his best friend's slight form. He needed to focus. He needed facts—

Although really, truly, the fact of the matter was that he made Kyle hard, and Kyle made _him _hard, and it could have been something they joked about had it not been so sudden and raw and real.

_What do I want? _he thought, and was disquieted by the fact that the answer—which had always been decipherable if not obvious—didn't come to him at all.

"Coffee?" Kyle said, and Stan jumped despite the fact that he'd been boring holes into Kyle with his gaze for the last several minutes.

"Yeah," he said, and didn't drink from the mug that Kyle passed him right away, opting instead to let the heat of the porcelain warm his hands. Kyle leaned over the opposite side of the island, his chin resting in his palm, and they looked at each other for several long moments until Stan, deeply uncomfortable, took a sip of his coffee, which was hot and choked his nostrils with the scent of hazelnut.

"You look weird."

Stan glanced up at him again, flustered. "Huh?"

The corners of Kyle's lips turned up as he took a sip—lips that, until recently, had been pressed against his as his hands crept upward, exploring the smoothness and warmth of his friend's bare skin (_focus, Stan, you need to focus_). "You keep staring at me."

Stan's head dipped immediately, breaking his gaze, as he rubbed the back of his neck. He drank more coffee. "Sorry," he said.

"Um, no," Kyle said, too quickly for it to be casual. "It's fine. I mean, it's… I don't mind."

Having nothing else to say—and feeling a peculiar tightness in his throat that would have impeded him from talking anyway—Stan took another long sip, his fingers pressing hard against the mug. Kyle, apparently embarrassed, glanced out the window, where the sky had begun to deepen into twilight. They sat there for several long moments, listening to the clock tick loudly from above the cabinets, before Stan, seeming to stir, put down his cup with a click. "Hey," he said with some degree of hesitation. "Listen."

Kyle bit his lip, and looked like he was about to say something in response, but a thump from the living room made both of them start. A moment later, Ike Broflovski appeared in the doorway, where he stood and regarded the two of them with speculative eyes. He didn't register any surprise that Stan was there.

"What's up," Stan said, trying to pretend that his heart wasn't racing, while Kyle turned and shut the glassware cabinet behind him, which he had left hanging open while he was looking for clean mugs. "Oh, hey, Ike," he said. "I didn't even know you were here."

"I was doing homework," Ike said, as if it should have been obvious. "Now I'm hungry."

He crossed to the refrigerator, either unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge the weird atmosphere that had been building in the room, and after half a minute of standing in front of it he apparently couldn't find anything of interest, since he turned away again and took a seat at the side of the island that wasn't already occupied. Stan and Kyle both watched him, apparently unwilling to look at each other, as he pulled the fruit bowl toward him and started rummaging through its contents. Stan followed his movements idly at first, wondering in the back of his mind whether he'd be able to get Kyle alone one last time before he left, but when Ike glanced up at him he turned his head abruptly, feeling somehow ashamed. Ike found a mostly unbruised apple and bit into it, the crunch loud in the tense, cramped space of the kitchen.

"What homework are you doing?" Kyle asked, unwilling just to ignore this intruder on his and Stan's after-school moments.

"Nothing interesting." Kyle looked plaintively at his brother. "Can I have some coffee?"

"No."

"But there's a ton left in the pot."

"It stunts your growth. And you're puny already."

"Aw, c'mon, Kyle. I won't tell."

"Doesn't matter. You still can't have any."

Ike pouted at him, but relented, dropping his chin onto the small arms he'd crossed over the counter. Kyle slid the second mug away from Stan, who was shrugging his fall jacket over his shoulders and glancing meaningfully at the back door. "You going, dude?"

"Yeah," Stan said.

"Wasn't there something you wanted to—?"

"Later." His gaze drifted to Kyle, almost long enough for it to be significant, then dropped abruptly to his backpack at his feet, which he knelt to pick up. "See you tomorrow, all right?"

"Sure," Kyle said. Cup pressed between his hands, he followed Stan with his eyes as he blew through the rickety screen door and around the side of the house.

Ike was watching Kyle watching Stan, even after he was out of sight. "Can I have some coffee now?" he said finally.

Kyle snorted and turned to put Stan's mug in the sink. "What, because Stan left? Give it up, Ike, I'm notletting you have any."

Ike's stuck out his small pointed chin, his mouth flattening into a hard line. "So you won't care if I tell Mom and Dad that you and Stan have been making out on the couch every day for the last three weeks?"

Kyle dropped the mug. It shattered on the tile and splashed leftover coffee all over his socks and the cuffs of his jeans, but he was past noticing; there was only his own burgeoning panic and the smug look on Ike's tiny face. "… What?"

"You thought I wouldn't notice? Jeez, Kyle, you must think I'm stupid or something."

Kyle grabbed a dishtowel from the handle of the oven and dropped into a crouch to clean up the spilled coffee and the broken mug, but once he was down he was frozen there, leaning against the cabinets on the underside of the island. His pulse was roaring in his ears, aggravated by the caffeine, and although his head was spinning a million miles a minute the only thought that came into his head was _shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit_.

"Kyle?"

_Why did we do it in the living room when Ike or my parents could come in at any moment? _That was just where they hung out. That was where it happened. Going anywhere else would make it seem premeditated. _But why couldn't we just hang out in my room? If we _knew _we were going to—? _His room was _too _private. The possibility of being interrupted was what kept them from going too far. _So why didn't we just stop, since this was bound to happen eventually…?_

Well, that was the thing. They couldn't.

"I won't tell Mom and Dad, okay?" Ike's voice had come from somewhere above his head. When Kyle didn't respond, his brother dropped to his knees next to him and pried the dishtowel from his clenched fist. "I promise. I wasn't even gonna say anything, but you were kind of being a jerk, so I…"

As Ike mopped up the mess and chatted away at him, Kyle grasped his forearms, unsure of what else to do with his hands. He could feel himself trembling, both because of Ike's revelation and the ones that were going on in his head, and his face and neck—god_damn _he hated being a redhead—were turning bright red.

"… Kyle?" Ike craned his head to look directly into Kyle's face. "Hello?"

It was not, after all, as if he was _opposed _to doing more than kissing Stan. If Stan had shown signs of wanting to do something more—intimate—it would have been… fine. He would have gone along with it.

He wouldn't have known the first thing to _do_, of course, having had his first real, proper kiss less than a month ago, but everyone had to start somewhere. After all, Stan hadn't done any of this stuff before with another guy either, even if, with Wendy, he had something to compare it to—

And that was an area of thought so dangerous that Kyle rubbed his face furiously to keep it from progressing any further.

"You can pretend I didn't say anything if you want, but don't freak out on me, okay? I hate it when you…"

It was embarrassing. It was embarrassing as all hell, and it made his insides squirm and prickle with shame to think of it, but he wanted _more_. He wasn't just ambivalent to it, he _wanted _it, and he would not be able to rid himself of this itch, this ache, until he got it. He wanted to touch Stan. And he wanted even more for Stan to touch him.

"It doesn't really bother me, I swear. I don't care if you and Stan are gay together or whatever—"

"We are _not_," Kyle said loudly. "We're not… '_gay _together'—"

"Oh, yeah, sure, that's why you spend all your time sucking face with him."

"It is not 'all my time.'"

"Dude, it's a_ lot_. I'm afraid to come downstairs until Mom gets home."

"We're not_ 'gay'_," Kyle said, turning even redder. "It's not like that. We—it just kind of happened, and—okay, we're not going to have this conversation. You're eleven."

"And seven months," Ike said irritably. "And I'm starting _high school_ next year. I'm really not stupid, okay?"

"I know. I know you're not. But this is different."

"I don't see how," Ike said stubbornly, and when Kyle shrugged like that proved his point, he blurted out, "Have you guys had sex or anything?"

Kyle thought he might have popped a blood vessel. "_No_," he managed to force out. "No. Not even close. And we _won't_. Jesus, Ike, just… don't talk about it. Just _don't_."

Ike frowned at him. "It seriously doesn't bother me," he said. "The gay stuff. And I don't think Mom and Dad would care too much either, after a while. I always hear them, you know, saying how it worries them that you never bring any girls home—"

"I am _so sick_ of hearing that," Kyle snapped, so harshly that he seemed to have forgotten he was talking to his little brother. "Whether I like someone or not, it has _nothing to do _with Stan. And Mom and Dad _can't _know, because they would tell Stan's parents and Stan is still dating Wendy!"

Ike had fallen silent during Kyle's outburst, and now watched his brother with wide eyes that were just the slightest bit fearful. Gradually his eyebrows furrowed, the way they did when he was struggling to figure something out, and his fingers tightened on the shards of Stan's mug that he held in his small hands. "… Geez. Really?"

When Kyle didn't say anything, Ike leaned a little closer and said, "Doesn't that _bother _you?"

Kyle closed his eyes. There was something telling in his face, he knew, something that he himself would cringe to recognize, and he had to struggle not to let his little brother see it. "I told you you didn't understand."

* * *

Stan was a little confused by Kyle's reluctance to go to his house after school the next day, but not bothered; they hung out by the bike racks, joking and saying goodbye to their friends and acquaintances as they left, and by the time dark storm clouds began rolling by overhead and Kyle suggested they go back inside to avoid the rain, the school and the surrounding grounds were largely deserted. They traversed the long, empty hallways with their hands stuffed in their jacket pockets, avoiding the elderly janitor and communicating in low voices that nonetheless bounced over the walls in short crescendos and decrescendos of sound, and while they talked at length, about nothing and everything, laughing and ripping on other people and even on each other, in the subtler, gentler way they'd learned how over the course of their long friendship, mostly they listened to each other's silences, dreading and anticipating that the other would turn those hesitations into words, into something weighted and real.

"It's weird being here with everyone gone," Stan said after a long stretch in which neither of them spoke, more to break the silence than anything else.

"Mm." Kyle sunk slowly onto one of the tiled steps, his hand wrapped loosely around the banister to his right. "Pretty soon we'll all be gone for good."

Stan paused, watching Kyle stare distantly at the ceiling for a moment, then backtracked several steps, rejoining his friend at the base of the stairs. Kyle always got kind of maudlin and philosophical when it rained. "What, you mean we'll all be dead someday or something?"

"Wh—" Kyle snorted and Stan grinned sheepishly, a little embarrassed but pleased that he'd managed to make Kyle laugh. "I mean, yeah, sure, obviously, but I'm just talking about… this place. Our class. We're all leaving this school at the end of this year, and once we graduate we'll never be able to come back."

"Sure we will," Stan said, sitting on the step next to Kyle as Kyle looked at him, eyebrows raised. "What? Dude, don't be so dramatic. We'll all come back for breaks and stuff, or at least the summer. We'll all see each other again."

"Well, sure," Kyle said, pulling his hat more firmly over his hair. "But it'll be different." When Stan didn't say anything, he continued: "We'll all go to different colleges, most of us. We'll know different places and people and have different experiences, and… everything will change."

Stan was still quiet, watching the toes of his sneakers. "I thought that was supposed to be a good thing," he said finally.

"Well… well yeah, usually," Kyle said, frowning. "No—no, it _is_. In a lot of ways, I can't wait to get out. But it's just… unbelievable."

"I know," Stan said.

"Most of all," Kyle said, as if he hadn't spoken, "it's hard to think that this time next year, I'll be living in a place I've never been before with a bunch of people that I haven't even met. And that I won't see you every single day."

Before he could think about what he was doing, Stan's hand was grasping at Kyle's, resting limply on the step between them. Kyle started, but he didn't pull away, running his thumb over Stan's knuckles with an experimental lightness.

"Don't say that," Stan said.

Kyle gave Stan a sideways look, half-affectionate and half-cynical, as he responded. "Why not?"

"Because I've been spending the whole year so far trying not to think about it."

Kyle didn't answer, interlacing his fingers with Stan's, and the two of them sat there in silence, both self-consciously ignoring the fact that they were holding hands despite the fact that they could feel the heat of each other's skin in their touch.

* * *

"We should get out of here," Stan said.

The emergency lights had come on, buzzing eerily in the relative vacuum of the dim hallways. They got clumsily to their feet, and when Kyle tried to let go of Stan's hand Stan just gripped it tighter.

"Um," Kyle said, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment and something else. "Okay. But—"

"My house." Stan appeared to have made a decision about something. His jaw was set with something like determination, although he still glanced at Kyle as if to gauge his reaction. "That's okay with you, isn't it?"

"Sure. Of course it is." He was still grounded, technically, but at the moment his mother's wrath didn't seem so important.

They blew out of the front doors with their arms braced against the storm. Kyle pressed his hat to his head while Stan finally let go of his friend's hand to wrap his jacket more securely around himself, both lamenting the fact that neither of them had his own car. They left the school grounds behind them, stumbling through puddles, bumping into each other in the rain. The streets were deserted aside from the occasional car with blinding headlights, no one else pushing through the wind, no kids out trick-or-treating, and the windows they passed were dark or dimmed, curtains shut against the rage of the storm outside; as Kyle traced his friend's footsteps, his fingers hovering a scant few inches from the curve of Stan's grasping hand, he felt almost as if they were the only people in the world.

Kyle pushed into the Marsh's kitchen while Stan struggled to lock the back door behind them. The house was apparently empty, quiet and dark. Their heaving breaths were loud and ugly in the stillness that permeated its rooms.

"Jesus," Kyle muttered as he plopped down at the table and yanked at his sodden shoes. "Christ. This weather is fucking crazy, dude."

"Sure is," Stan said, and the tightness in his voice brought Kyle crashing back to reality; this was not old Stan with him, who would laugh and make fun of Kyle for his fucked-up windswept hair even as he cranked the heat up and brought him a blanket; this Stan was quiet, and stoic, and tender somehow even as he maintained this coldness, this weird not-distance between them that was becoming harder and harder to bear.

"Jesus," Kyle said again, although the quaver in his voice wasn't from the cold. "I'm completely soaked." He began stripping off his socks, his jacket, and finally his hat, feeling Stan's eyes on him the whole time.

"I can lend you something," Stan said, his voice ringing in the silence. They were alone, more completely and totally alone than they had been in days, in weeks, and Kyle felt that itch, that need, beginning to build beneath his skin.

"That's okay," he said, and he could hear it in his voice, the way it shook; Stan hadn't moved, standing in the middle of the kitchen looking at him, and when it seemed like he couldn't avoid it any longer Kyle got to his feet, his wet clothes clinging to him at every sensitive juncture. "Stan—"

Stan yanked him forward by the front of his shirt and kissed him; Kyle didn't hesitate, didn't miss a beat, and kissed him back, his arms wrapping definitively around Stan's neck. They almost fell over, Stan grabbing the counter to steady himself, but the angle only served for them to gain more pressure, to get closer together. Stan broke the kiss to free Kyle of his t-shirt, pulling the offending article up over his head, while Kyle pressed his face into Stan's neck and worked at the buttons of his shirt with trembling fingers.

"Calm down," Stan whispered, laying his cheek against the side of Kyle's sodden head. "You're shaking."

"Nn… no, I—I'm fine," Kyle said, giving up on the shirt halfway and wrapping his arms around the bare upper half of Stan's chest, which was flushed and beginning to prickle with sweat. "I'm just really cold."

Stan laid a kiss on Kyle's temple, quickly, like he couldn't help it. "C'mon."

They fell into the couch in the living room, where Stan shed his shirt and settled against Kyle's chest, between his legs; Kyle held onto him like a drowning man, both terrified and exhilarated by Stan's weight on top of him, the intent behind his kisses. He tightened his thighs around the shape of Stan's hips between them, and Stan pressed the palm of his hand against the crotch of Kyle's jeans.

"Wait," Kyle whispered, his hands curling against Stan's chest. "Wait."

"What?" Stan whispered back—but he didn't stop, finding the hard shaft of Kyle's penis where it was pressed against his leg and applying the slightest bit of pressure, so that his breath hitched and his hips jerked at the contact. Kyle wanted this. Kyle wanted this as much as he did.

"I just—" Kyle sat up, flushed and disheveled-looking, and Stan brushed his red curls out of his eyes with the hand that wasn't, by this time, kneading stubbornly at the point between his legs. "I've been thinking that I—" He took a deep breath and let his eyes flutter closed, obviously having trouble putting a complete sentence together but unwilling to tell Stan to stop. "That I want to pay you back."

Stan pressed his lips to the joining of Kyle's neck and shoulder, and when his friend's chest pulsed with a suppressed gasp he began struggling with the buttons on Kyle's jeans. "For what?" he mumbled, before laying a kiss in the hollow above Kyle's collarbone, as lightly as he could bear.

"For… you know. For what you did before."

It took Stan a moment to figure out what he meant. He sat up and looked at his friend. "… Really?"

Kyle nodded, unable to speak.

They stumbled up the stairs to Stan's bedroom, constricted by their wet jeans and their trembling, ecstatic nervousness. Kyle made to drop to his knees, but Stan pulled him onto the bed with him, watching his best friend shift between his own loosely-bent legs as his back and shoulders knocked against the flimsy headboard; his own body, weak and almost useless, felt less real to him than the feather-light brush of Kyle's fingertips against his stomach as they came to rest on the waistband of his jeans.

"You all right?" he whispered as Kyle paused.

"Yeah, sure," Kyle said, his voice wavering with nervousness even as he tried to grin. "'Cause, you know, I do this all the time." He freed Stan's erection, gently, his fingers drifting down the length of the shaft and back up again, while Stan found his gaze lingering on Kyle's lips, the curve of his cheek; there was something about his face that Stan loved, really loved, in that moment, even though he didn't know how he would even begin to articulate it.

"Kyle," he said, muddled, and unsure as to why he'd even needed to say Kyle's name.

Kyle didn't look up. "You swallowed when you did it for me," he said almost bluntly. "Didn't you?"

"I…" Stan's tongue felt thick and lumbering in his mouth. He felt like that blowjob he'd given Kyle had happened years ago, not weeks; the person who'd brought himself to do that, for the most selfish reasons imaginable, was different from the person he'd been beforehand, and different from the person he was becoming, was about to become. "Yeah, I… guess I did."

"Okay," Kyle said, as if steeling himself; he lowered his head the slightest bit—then stopped, looking up at Stan with a heavy-lidded gaze, his lips parted in hesitation. "… Stan?"

"Yeah?"

"Has Wendy ever done this for you?"

The question shot Stan through with panic, but he was too tense, too horny, to want to examine why. "No," he said, his voice coming out in a croak. "Never."

The corner of Kyle's mouth twitched; he mumbled something that might have been "good" before he took San's dick into his mouth.

Stan let the breath he had been holding out in a strained gasp; it was wetness, and heat, and the strange and wonderful feeling of Kyle's tongue brushing demurely against his shaft. He looked dumbly at his best friend, who he'd sat next to in preschool when he was four and had shared toys and video games and adventures and hopes and dreams with since then, and whose mouth was now moving, slowly, up and down his penis, his hair hanging in his face as his one visible eye was closed tightly in concentration, and Stan was hit suddenly with the absurdity of it all. He felt terror and derision and longing in quick, hot flashes, and underneath it all he felt something bubbling up, a sweet, painful fulfillment that he was almost afraid to let touch him. "Oh my God," he mumbled, his words punctuated by quick, hot gasps; "Oh my God—oh my God, Kyle—"

It was dark in the room, but Stan could swear Kyle's face flushed darker; he sucked harder, his hand coming up to caress Stan's balls, and Stan bit his tongue, and grabbed a fistful of Kyle's hair and pulled, wanting more, more—

And then they heard a noise on the stairs, and the swell of a female voice calling Stan's name; Kyle sat up abruptly, staring at Stan with wide, panicked eyes, and Stan just had time to tumble both of them and his comforter over the side of the bed opposite the door before it was flung wide open, the noise loud and garish in the still hush of his bedroom.

"So you _are _here," Shelley said shortly. She had a flashlight in one hand and her cell phone in the other. "The power went out."

"Oh yeah?" Stan said, fighting to keep his voice steady.

"How the fuck don't you know that?" The beam of the flashlight wavered on the wall opposite them, but Shelley seemed unwilling to intrude upon Stan's space just yet. "Is there someone in there with you?" she said suspiciously.

"Nnn… no," Stan said, trying his best to ignore Kyle's hot breath against his bare chest. "Just me. Alone."

"Oh." She was quiet for a moment, during which he could practically hear the cogs in her brain turning. "_Ew_. Gross, Stan."

"So learn to knock," Stan muttered. He felt Kyle's lips twitch into a grin.

"Shut up, _turd_," Shelley said heatedly, the beam of the flashlight bobbing up and down against Stan's pulled curtains. "I was gonna make you dig Dad's generator out of the crap in the basement, but I guess _I'll _do it. Since you're _busy_."

"Uh-huh," Stan said with considerable strain—as Kyle had just slipped his hand down the front of Stan's boxers and brushed his thumb against the head of Stan's dick, still slick with his own saliva.

"Oh my _God_," Shelley said loudly. "Are you_ still _doing it? You're _disgusting_, Stan. I—" She heaved a sigh that covered the elevated sound of Stan's breathing. "Mom's gonna be home in a _half hour_, and you better have _pants _on, and be ready to help me with the goddamn generator by then. Or I'll pound you. Understand?"

"Sure," Stan mumbled. "Yes. Just get the fuck out."

Almost as soon as the door clicked behind her Stan grabbed Kyle's shoulders and flung him roughly onto the floor, the discarded comforter tangling with their legs. The floor beneath them shook with their weight, and indeed Shelley Marsh glared at her brother's bedroom door before she decided to let it go, but Stan had already put it out of mind that he even had a sister; all he cared about, all he knew, was Kyle's subtly muscled torso, the angular curve of his hipbones, the swell of hardness between his legs. They each struggled out of their wet jeans, Stan still kicking free of the sodden denim as Kyle wrapped his thighs around Stan's hips, and as they found a frantic rhythm Stan reached between them and grabbed both of their cocks, making Kyle exhale sharply with an unabashed desire. Through his increasingly ragged breathing Stan found Kyle's mouth with his own, and in the moment before he came he felt his best friend's harsh breath form the syllable of his name.

* * *

_Wooo look it is an M-rated story._

This is draft #2. I dislike it a whole lot less. That is all.

For those of you who find it unrealistic that Wendy could have dated Stan for that long without ever going down on him: do you really think she would? And, that said, do you really think Stan would have the nerve to ask her?

As for what I was hinting at with Cartman early on in this chapter: he's certainly got a different relationship with Stan than he does with Kyle, or even Stan and Kyle together. I just wanted to put that into play a little bit in this story. Since this is more of a realist narrative than the surrealist comedy/satire that the show itself is, I kind of wanted to portray Cartman as less of a dangerous sociopath and more of an actual teenage boy, as awful as he still might be. I mean, he's still a _person_ (allegedly).

Annnnnyway. Next time we have lots more Wendy and Kenny (and if I haven't sold you yet on the two of them I'm sorry, but I just have _so much fun _making them bitch at each other), and maybe Stan and Wendy will actually have a conversation. Maybe. :D I have too much fun. _Review_, please, as always; I swear to God and Satan and Baby Jesus that it'll make my day.


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